162 
Ttoo Copper-plate Inscriptions from BamangMti. [No. 3, 
applied, might help me in removing the last adhering scales of 
oxide and dust. This was accordingly done, hut as the bath used 
was a weak one, it took some days before the process appeared to have 
any effect. As the plates now are, they are very clear, except at 
three or four places, which look blotched, but those defects did not 
interfere with the decyphering of the inscriptions. 
The tablets are each surmounted by a round seal with a high 
undulating rim so formed as to resemble roughly a full blown lotus. 
The seals appear to have been forged with the tablets, after the 
latter had been completed, and the convexity of the back of the seal 
indicates that they had been separately attached to a holder, though 
the circumstance of the characters of the legend not being reversed, 
as usual in a seal, seems to be opposed to such a supposition. The 
tablets are inscribed on both sides commencing from the left corner 
of the top with the legend of the seal upwards. A portion of the 
first line of each inscription has been covered by the rim of the 
seal, but the position of the seals on the two tablets being slightly 
different and the inscriptions on the two being almost identical, the 
portion covered in one has been left apparent in the other. 
The character is the Devanagari of the twelfth century, but 
is allied to the Gaudiya rather than to the Kutila type. It is 
curious to observe, however, that in both the plates certain very 
ancient forms have been retained. Thus vr, f and have 
retained their ancient forms, and especially the ^ and 3 ;, while such 
letters as ^r, ^r, and ^ are scarcely distinguishable from their 
Bengali equivalents of the last century. The vowel signs are iden¬ 
tical with those of the Bengali alphabet, though slight modifications 
are observable in the signs of and which are like the Bengali 
sign of ^2. The Bengali of ?r, rf, ^F, «r, 'sr and may be traced to the 
forms engraved on these tablets. Modern compound consonants, 
such as tF, <3 and are not visible in those inscriptions; 
they are written as <fre, apF, ere, ?srsr. The attached to the 
compound is like that of the Bengali. The forms of ^ and 
(?) are most peculiar, being nothing like Gaudiya or Kutila types, 
but are more likened to the crude forms of the Pali. The *T and ^ 
the and ^ (at certain places), the *?, ^ and sq and the <r and 
are so very like one another, that nothing but a thorough 
