90 A. F. R, Hoernle— On the date of the Bower Manuscript. [No. 2, 
invented and exclusively employed. But to the non-conjunct ya, it only 
began to be applied about 470 A. D. At first it was only applied 
tentatively and hesitatingly in those cases in which the non-conjunct 
ya carried the vowels e or o (or ai or au ). But the convenience of the 
cursive form soon carried everything before it, and displaced the old 
form entirely about 540 A. D. In all probably this process commenced, 
in the case of manuscript writing, earlier than in that of documentary 
inscription, perhaps already about 400 A. B., and terminated proportion¬ 
ately earlier, perhaps about 500 A. B. On the other hand, in document¬ 
ary inscription the process began later and ended later. Here the use 
of the old form may have lingered on to about 600 A. D.; but from that 
date, as already shown from the evidence of existing dated inscriptions, 
the use of the cursive form of ya enjoyed an undisputed possession of 
the field. 
Accordingly for practical purposes, the rule may be laid down, that 
any inscription in the North-Western Indian alphabet which show's the 
more or less exclusive use of the old form of YA must date from before 600 
A. B., while any inscription showing an exclusive use of the cursive form of 
YA must date from after 600 A. B. 
With regard to manuscripts the same rule must hold good, with 
this modification, that the termini must be put back by about 50 (or it 
may be 100) years; that is, a MS. showing the exclusive use of the 
cursive form of YA must date from after 550 or perhaps 500 A. B., while 
a MS. showing the more or less exclusive use of the old form of YA must 
date from before 550 or 500 A. B., and a MS. showing the exclusive use of 
the old form of YA must date from before 450 A. B. 
That this rule, as deduced from the above collected facts, is correct 
is proved by the Horiuzi MS. This MS. uses the cursive form of ya 
exclusively, and, as shown by Professor Biihler, it certainly dates from 
some time between 520 and 577 A. D. 
This rule further proves that the elaboration of the so-called S'arada 
alphabet may be placed about 500 A. D. For it possesses the cursive 
form of ya. Hence it follows that any manuscript and a fortiori any 
inscription, written in the S'arada characters must certainly be later 
than 500 A. B. ; though as the S'arada characters, with slight modifica¬ 
tions, are used up to the present day in Kashmir and the adjacent 
regions, a mere consideration of the form of the cursive ya is insufficient 
to fix with any approximation the date of such a manuscript or inscrip¬ 
tion in any particular year after that epoch. 
Now let us see the bearing of the results of the above enquiry on 
the question of the age of the Bower MS. 
(1) It is to be noticed that the old form of YA is used almost ex- 
