188 
Remarks on the above by JE. O. Baylcy , Esq. [No. 2, 
]y did, and sufficient vitality to assert its supremacy and community 
with the Hindu element, as the facts of subsequent history so far 
as ascertainable would indicate. Albeit to this day many of the wild 
tribes (e. g. the Ghukkurs) who people the country even south of 
the Indus, can scarcely be considered as having ever fairly belonged 
to the Hindu race. 
That a foreign element was strong in the trans-Jhelum districts at 
the period of which I have spoken, may be guessed from the fami¬ 
liar names of men and places, which are certainly for the most part 
anything but Pali or Hindu. These are indications of the tendency 
of the daily life of the races for whom the inscriptions were writ¬ 
ten, and I think that it may be fairly from them assumed, that the 
language of their common use must be, prima facie, expected to par¬ 
take of a similar character. 
It is not therefore too much to say that in these regions at least 
(and perhaps this is true also to some degree and at some time of other 
parts of India) we should not expect the language of an inscription 
of the period to which we refer to be either pure Pali or Sanscritized 
Pali; and a version which renders it as such is, I think, therefore 
ipso facto open to doubt and suspicion. Of course under such circum¬ 
stances more than ordinary jealousy and circumspection is necessary 
in “ stretching” the phonetic value of any letter, to suit an intelli¬ 
gible reading. 
Having said so much on this point, I wish to notice another pre¬ 
liminary objection to Bajendra Lai’s version, which is the somewhat 
high flown character of the language as given by him. It is opposed 
to that which, as far as other inscriptions of the same period go to 
show, was employed at that time and in similar inscriptions. True, as 
Bajendra Lai has pointed out (in page 182) this argument is of lit¬ 
tle value if the reading of the inscription is in itself unimpeach¬ 
able, but where, as here, that is not the case, it is an argument which 
goes some way to overthrow the probability that the version given 
is the correct one. 
I am now bound to give the transliteration of the inscription, 
which appears to me to be correct, and having done this I will attempt 
to give a conjectural reading, open I am aware to very considerable 
doubt, but which still seems to me preferable to that above offered. 
Before doing so I would observe that the phonetic value of but 
