T 
A TRANSLATION OF THE KEDDA ANNALS. 481 
The remains of numerous temples which I discovered being: 
induced to the seatch first accidentally by having seen some loo-e 
hrir ks lying in a spot in I he finest, and afieiwards fiom leading 
the above noticed passages, when joined to the ruins of almost 
every fort and site dtscnbed in this history of Kedda likewise 
found by me, a e so far satisfactory, that they vetifv the main 
points o! that history All due allowances shot,Id be made for the 
Snort? of the imagination indulged in by our author. I. is not long 
since supernatuial powers were believed in Europe to be scqu’red 
by individuals, and when there were always r&uly reasons to ac¬ 
count for what ignorance could not unfold and tupineness would 
not tiy to unravel. In a wotd, what would many of our Euro ean 
histories >e if undecked in the flowers of fiction, and did not a 
vigorous, clear and lively imagination cast around the past and 
tire probable, and often even the improbable a bright halo of 
seeming reality. The Baconic method cannot he applied to his¬ 
tory, so long as we see not the whole links of cause and effei t, 
but it is to he fearen that excepting in the gradually working out of 
gieat social and political problems and change-, and in those 
Stirring cases where events often surpass fiction, history would be 
little better in many civilized countries than a mere dry chronicle. 
It is easy to state pno aole facts, and then to draw inferences and 
advance reasonings on them as if they were tiutbs. 
It is cuiious that ne ther ihe writer of these Kedda annals, nor 
the compiler of those termed Sigara Malayu or Malayan Annals, 
have described i lie nature of the predominant or stale religions of 
their tunes Our present author contents himself with shewing 
only that the Kedda people * were image worshippers’ while the 
Malayan Annalist leaves us to guess at the religion of the Malays 
ol Malacca # 
I have discovered several inscriptions in what I take to be the 
Pali or Bali chaiacter, carved on stune But they 1 fear afford no 
dales. But as they a,e apparently in veiy old forms of thai cha¬ 
racter, some light may be thrown on the period when they were 
employed in Kedda A- we have no Pundits in the Straits I 
purpose submitting these inscii t Uions to the learned in Calcutta. 
One of these inscriptions, or rather a part of one, whit h I discover¬ 
ed many years ago neat the almost obliterated remains of an old 
temple, has been pronounced by the late and lamented Mr Pnnsep 
to whom I sent it, as “ in a style of letter nearly that of the Alla¬ 
habad No. II.” It seems to me that another inscription, found on 
a large rock at Tokouti in Province Wellesley [u] may al-o prove 
ol s me value, although 1 doubt if it (tears any date. The eh nac- 
ter is evidently I think one of the antient forms of the Bali or Pali, 
and I ho, e to obtain a tiauslation of it. In all my numerous 
[u] Some Malays shewed it firs! lo Mr Thomson, Government •Surveyor, 
as a boundary sione, and lie therefore paid no aiiention to it. I copied ihe 
inscription with the greatest accuracy as the letters are very large. 
