1893.] 
A. F. R. Iloernle — The Weber Manuscripts. 
7 
modern (square) form. It is clear, therefore, that the “Wartu” letters, 
from which Sambhota copied his own, cannot have been precisely the 
same as those exhibited in Babu S. Ch. Das’ table. Now there is an 
unmistakable similarity of the letters shown in the table of the Asiatic 
Researches, on the one hand, with the Babu’s “Wartu” characters, and 
on the other, with the Central Asian characters in the Weber Manuscripts. 
In the table there is a series of Khacheehee letters, that is, clearly, letters 
of Khache (Central Asia.) These, therefore, should be the letters, from 
which Sambhota adapted his alphabet. And, as a matter of fact, it 
will be found that the letter y shows in that table its old tri-dentate form. 
But further, in that table the letter y appears in three different forms : 
first, in the distinctly tri-dentate form ( 1SJ ) in the second line, then in 
an intermediate bi-annulate form (/ 2 7 ) in the third line, and lastly in 
the (practically) modern square form in the fourth line. The last of 
these three forms, the modern one, is never found in any portion of our 
manuscripts. The form in which it is usually occurs in them, is the in- 
termediate, bi-annulate one. In the most ancient tri-dentate form it 
only occurs, optionally, in Part V of the Weber Manuscripts. With 
regard to the Tibetan alphabet, the evidence seems to point to this con- 
clusion, that Sambhota had before him a “ Khache ” alphabet, similar 
to those shown in the Plate of the Asiatic Researches, but sufficiently 
ancient, to still show uniformly the ancient tri-dentate form of the letter 
y, which, in its turn, explains the presence of that ancient form in 
the current Tibetan alphabet. The characters he had before him may 
have been something similar to those seen in Part V of the Weber 
Manuscripts. On the other hand, the “Wartu” letters, shown in Babu 
S. C. Das’ plate had for their prototype a somewhat later “Khache” 
alphabet, — one which had already adopted the modern square form of 
the letter y. 
The whole of the Weber Manuscripts are written in the Sanskrit 
language, of more or less grammatical purity, except Part IX. This is 
written in the square variety of the Central Asian Nagari, and in a 
language which to me is unintelligible. The strange ligatures that 
occur in it, such as ITckh, tsts, yl, shsli, pts, Ihb, nh, ys, etc., are foreign 
to Sanskrit or any Sanskritic language that I know of ; yet undoubted 
Sanskrit words do occur numerously interspersed in the text. Such 
are asvalcanda and asvagandha, sirisha (Skr. sirishd)-pushpa, priyahgu, 
punarnava, manchamslitham (Skr. manjishthd), sarava (Skr. sdriva), 
medha and mahamedha (Skr. meda and mahdmeda), prapundarilcha or 
prapuntarikha (both spellings occur for Skr. prapaundarika) , katu- 
rohini, kdkori and ksliira-kakori, devaddru, etc. It will bo noticed that 
most of the names are not correctly spelled ; unaspirates being ex- 
