1901 .] 
Section III. Manuscripts. 
13 
Pothis, all written in Sanskrit, not exactly of the classic, but of 
the so-called “mixed” type. The second Set consists of six Pothis, 
written in the unknown language. My impression, from the general 
character of the language, is that its identity has to he looked for in 
the direction of the monosyllabic Tibetan rather than of the Turki or 
Mongol languages. A curious point about it, as presented in these 
Pothis, is that it is largely intermixed with Sanskrit words, strangely 
misspelled. These words are mostly technical terms, medical or reli¬ 
gious ; and this fact seems to indicate that the works in which they 
occur may be translations of Sanskrit originals into the language of the 
country in which they were found. 
None of the Pothis is dated. Their age, however, can be estimated 
with much probability from palseographic and 
other considerations. They are all written 
in one form or other of the Gupta script, and the period of this script 
is included roughly between 300 and 700 A.D. Three of the Pothis, 
viz., Nos. 1 and 2 of Set I, and No. 1 of Set II, are said to have been found 
in the Kuchar stupa, together with the Weber MSS. and the Bower MSS. 
These, therefore, may be taken to be practically of the same age. The 
date of the Bower MSS. it is possible to fix with tolerable certainty; for 
they are all written in the Indian (not the Central Asian) type of the 
Gupta script, doubtless, by Natives of India; and their age, therefore, 
is determined by the well-known facts of Indian palaeography. I have 
explained the argument fully in a paper published in the Journal of the 
Asiatic Society of Bengal, Yol. LX (1891), pp. 79 ft. It is briefly this: 
the Gupta script of North-Western India has two signs for the consonant 
y, a three-pronged and a two-pronged or rather boot-shaped one (compare 
No. 14 in Columns 1 and 6 of Table II). Of these the boot-shaped 
sign is a later cursive development of the three-pronged one. There is 
also an intermediate cursive form, in which there is a line across the 
instep of the boot-shaped form (see No. 14 in Cols. 4 and 14, and the 
lower sign in Col. 12). This form was a transitional one which appears 
to have been current only during a very short period. This period, so 
far as epigraphic writing is concerned, extended from about 460-540 
A.D. Epigraphical records avoided the use of contemporary new¬ 
fangled cursive forms: they naturally preferred to use only the older 
forms, sanctioned by long usage and, therefore, well-known to every 
reader; cursive forms were only admitted, when they had acquired the 
sanction of a fair amount of literary usage. Epigraphic writing thus 
lags behind literary writing: the interval, of course, may vary; but a 
generation or two of writers, say about 50 years, may fairly represent it. 
For Pothi-writing, therefore, the period of the use of the transitional 
