1901.] Introductory Remarks. 5 
both positions. It was now obvious that whoever prepared the block, 
wrote the text on it in vertical lines in the ordinary position, and 
engraved it in that position, oblivions of the fact that as a consequence, 
in printing off the block the text would come out reversed and be illegi¬ 
ble. Such carelessness would hardly have occurred to one who under¬ 
stood the script and its language. The same conclusion is suggested by 
the inexplicable separation of the elements of the word ma-lkye-r 
which are found as ISTos. 43, 48 and 51 in the fourth line. Moreover 
most of the letters of the formula have no resemblance whatever to 
Brahim characters. The written codices which were the first products 
of Islam Akhun’s workshop) were done with far greater care, and though 
also largely interspersed with “ unknown characters ” might have con¬ 
tinued to suggest genuineness, if the fraud had not been definitely 
exposed through the personal investigations of Dr. Stein, to whom finally 
Islam Akhun made a full confession. In Plate I, No. 1, is shown one of 
the most curious specimens of an early fabricated codex. It is that which 
was contained in the bag said to have been dug out with the skull resting 
upon it (Introd., p. xx). The leaves are cut in the shape of a round- 
bottomed, narrow-necked bottle, with a long pendant lip. They are held 
together by a small tubular copper-peg which passes through the neck. 
The leaf shown in the Plate is the last of the inscribed leaves of the 
codex. The word malkyer is seen in the middle of the second line. A 
very nearly corresponding version of the text occurs on the final inscribed 
leaves of other two codices which are also shown in Plate I, Nos. 2 and 3, 
and where the word malkyer appears in a corresponding place in the 
second line. Specimen pages of the two latter codices are also shown in 
Plate XVIII, XIX and XX of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 
Bengal, Vol. LXVI (1897). Another version of the same text stands 
on a leaf of the codex shown ibidem , Plate XVII. Here the word mal¬ 
kyer occurs, e.g., on the page marked “ II. Obverse,” in the middle of 
the bottom-line. 
