fluid ounce :) this when dried and heated, did yield a little ammonia; it blackened, but did not burn visibly.

:

"A third bottle was found to contain a fatty substance like stearic acid, melting under 212°, burning with a bright flame, and leaving little ash. It was dark-brown on the exterior, and yellowish and semi-transparent in the middle the brown colouring matter was separated by dissolving the fat in alcohol-it was supposed to be the residue of albuminous or gelatinous matter, but it yielded no trace of ammonia."

Mr. Gage, the author of this description, imagines the liquid to have been lustral water, poured in at the time of depositing the bones and funeral ashes. The pieces of fused glass adhering to the burnt bones, and the liquid, recalled to him Virgil's description of the funeral pile of Misenus.

The dark-brown incrusted powder of the outside of the urn was in the same manner referred to a decayed wreath of yew, or other dark vegetable, depicted in the lines

The offerings at funeral sacrifices among the Romans consisted of milk, wine, blood, and such other munera as were supposed to be grateful to the deceased:money was usually added to defray the charges of Charon's ferry.

The reader may compare this description with the extracts from Colebrooke, before given, and draw his own conclusions.

As the opinions of all those who have visited the countries where these monuments lie, are particularly deserving of attention, I cannot resist the temptation of extracting a paragraph concerning them from the 'Manuscript Journal' of Mr. Trebeck, the companion of Mr. Moorcroft, now in my hands for transmission to Europe. These travellers, it will be seen, visited the spot where Mr. Masson has lately been so actively engaged. They procured some of the coins now so common to us, and they had received from native tradition the same account of the contents of the topes which has now been confirmed by direct examination.

"On the evening when we were encamped at Sultánpúr, Mr. Moorcroft, in the course of some inquiries learnt that there were in the neighbourhood a number of what the people called Búrjs or towers, which, according to their accounts of them, were exactly of the same form as that seen by us in the Khurbur country. In consequence of our stay at Bálá Bagh, we had sufficient leisure to return in search of them, and in the forenoon of the 8th, taking along with us a person in the service of Sultan Mahmud Khán, we set off towards the place where they were said to be. Our road lay between Sultánpúr and the Súrkháh, and taking a guide from that village, we were conducted to the bank of the latter rivulet which we were obliged to ford. The water was so deep and rapid that a man on foot could not have got across it, and its colour was quite red, from the quantity of red earth washed along by it. Having

passed it, and ridden over some fields, belonging to a small Garhí, or walled hamlet, and over a piece of clayey land, much cut and broken by water-courses, we reached a narrow gravelly slope, joining at a few hundred yards to the left, the base of the mountains bounding this side of the valley. Here we found a Búrj, but were a good deal disappointed by its appearance. It differed considerably from those we had before met with, and though certainly antique, was built much less substantially: its exterior being for the most part of small irregularly-sized slate, connected without mortar. A good deal of one side of it had fallen down, and there were others before us; we did not stay long to examine it. We counted several whilst proceeding, the number of them amounting, as well as I can recollect, to eleven, and seeing one more to the westward, and better than the rest, we advanced towards it. It was situated on a stony eminence at the base of the hills near where the main river of Kábul issues from behind them, and nearly on a line with the garden of Chahár Bágh.

"We ascended to it, and found it to be of about the same size as the one near Lalla Bagh, but, as just observed, of a different form. It was in a more perfect state than any of the rest in the same vicinity, but varied little from them either in style or figure. It was built upon a square structure, which was ornamented by pilasters with simple basements; but with rather curious capitals. Were it a tomb, one might suppose the centre of the latter coarsely to represent a skull supported by two bones, placed side by side, and upright, or rather a bolster or half cylinder with its lower part divided into two. On each side of this were two large pointed leaves, and the whole supported two slabs, of which the lower was smaller than the upper one. The most curious circumstance in this ornamental work was, that though it had considerable effect, it was constructed of small pieces of thin slate, cleverly disposed, and had more the appearance of the substitute of an able architect, who was pressed for time, and had a scarcity of material, than the work of one who had abundance of the latter, plenty of leisure, and a number of workmen at command. A flight of steps had formerly led up the southern side of this platform, but nothing remained of them except a projecting heap of ruins. On the centre of the platform was the principal building, called by the country people the Búrj, the sides of which had been erected on a perpendicular to half its present height. This lower portion of it was headed by a cornice, and was greater in diameter than the upper part of the structure, its top forming a sort of shelf round the base of the latter. Its centre was marked by a semicircular moulding, and the space between the moulding and the cornice was ornamented by a band of superficial niches, like false windows, in miniature, arched to a point at the top, and only separated by the imitation of a pillar formed, as before noticed, of slate. The upper part of the tower was a little curved inwards, or conical above; but a great deal of its top had fallen off. The effect given to its exterior by a disposition of material was rather curious. From a distance it seemed checked a good deal like a chess-board-an appearance occasioned by moderately large-sized pieces of quartz, or stone of a whitish colour, being imbedded in rows at regular distances in the thin brown slate before spoken of. I had just time, though hurried, to take an outline of its formation on a piece of drawing-paper.

"The use of these erections next became a matter of speculation, and Mr. Moorcroft, having heard that coins were frequently picked up in various placǝs near them, instructed a man the day after our return to proceed to the neighbourhood of them, and try if some ancient pieces of money were not to be found. The inhabitants of the Ummur Khail, a small village near them, said, that they learnt from tradition that there had formerly been a large city in this part of the valley, and pointed to some excavations across the Kábul river, which they told us had been a part of it. Of the

coins they stated that several had been found of copper, but as they were of no value to them, they had been taken to some of the nearest baniyas, or shopkeepers, and exchanged for common pice. This information gave a clue to the person in search of them, and he succeeded at two or three visits to some Hindús of Chahár Bágh, Sultanpúr, etc., in procuring several. He was also sent back to Jalálábád, but brought with him from thence only two pieces of Russian money, which were useless. The former were, however, very valuable and curious, and had on each side of them for the most part impressions of human figures; but from the frequency with which they were combined with representations of the elephant and the bull, it may be conjectured that they were struck at the command of a monarch of the Hindú, or Buddhist persuasion. The variety was considerable, and there were certainly two or three kinds which might have been Grecian, particularly one that had upon one side of it a bust, with the right arm and hand raised before the face with an authoritative air. Of this coin there were eight or ten, they were of about the same size as English farthings, and the figure spoken of was executed with a correctness and freedom of style foreign to Asia, at least in the latter ages. The rust upon them, and the decayed state of the surfaces of two or three, as well as the situation in which they were found, proved that they were not modern. There were several more of the same size, merely with inscriptions in letters not unlike Sanskrit; and some other inscriptions, on the larger pieces of money, were so legible that a person, acquainted with oriental letters and antiquities, might discover much from them. With regard to the Búrjs, or buildings previously mentioned, Mr. Moorcroft's opinion is probably correct. He conjectures that they are the tombs of some persons of great rank, among the ancient inhabitants or aborigines of the country; and as the religion of the Hindús seems to have been prevalent here in the earliest ages, that they have been erected as records of the sacrifices of Satís. But the question cannot be satisfactorily set at rest till one of them is opened. It is odd that they should have escaped destruction, situated as they are in the full front of Musalman bigotry and avarice; and, notwithstanding what some individuals assert, their present decayed state seems to be occasioned by age, rather than any attempt to discover whether they contain anything valuable. A few people say that one of them was opened, and that a small hollow place was covered near its base, in which there were some ashes as of the human body."

NOTE EXPLANATORY OF THE CONTENTS OF
PLATES IX. AND X.

[ I have taken advantage of the vacant space in plate ix. to insert a reduced fac-simile (fig. 2) of the bi-literal inscription discovered by Mr. E. C. Bayley in the Kangra Hills. These counterpart legends are stated to be "cut on two granite boulders, about thirty yards apart," in a field half-way between the village of Khunniara and the station of Dhurumsala, "on the edge of the high bank of a mountain torrent."

Transcribed into modern characters, these inscriptions may be reproduced as follows:

"The garden of Krishnayasa (or he who glories in Krishna)."

Indian Pálí,

क्रष्णयशस्य अरम मदंतस्य '

1

"The garden of the happy Krishnayasa.”

The chief palæographic value of these brief records consists in the proof they afford of the reception of the Indian Pálí anuswára (or dot above the ordinary line of writing), into the Arian or Bactrian Pálí alphabet. This can scarcely be supposed to be due to anything but mere local usage incident to the concurrent employment of the two sets of characters. The Arian system, in its primitive form, certainly did not admit of any such optional interchange of the nasal sign; for in the Kapurdigiri inscription the anuswára is regularly and uniformly represented by an arrow point below the preceding letter; while the numismatic alphabet, and the lapidary series of later days, expressed the same sound by a small semi-circular curve at the foot of its leading or introductory character. Mr. Bayley alludes to the supposed discovery by Major Cunningham of this nasal dot on the coins of Menander and Amyntas. Judging from the numerous examples of the coinages of Menander that I am able to refer to, I feel altogether unprepared to support any such inference, or to concede that the isolated dot below the line of writing purports anything beyond the established suffix A. That, in certain cases of faulty dieexecution, the small foot-curve constituting the N was degraded into one or even two dots, there is little doubt; but this would in no wise establish that the ordinary symbol of the A medial was convertible into an anuswára; and even supposing such a change likely or possible, there would still remain to be justified

1

[I am not quite satisfied of the accuracy of the assignment of the t in Madantasya; the fac-simile reads preferably Madangisya.]

so radical a change of alphabetical rule as the transposition of the sign from a position below to one above, the ordinary alignment of the writing; but I will reserve any further remarks upon the palæographic peculiarities of this and the other inscriptions in these plates, till such time as I come to consider the Bactrian alphabet under its various epochal and geographical aspects in the general résumé, towards the conclusion of these papers.

Another point of considerable interest connected with this inscription may, however, be momentarily adverted to, that is the distinct mention of Krishna as an object of religious reverence at so early a period as this record necessarily refers to. It is, of course, a hazardous matter to attempt to fix dates from the mere modifications of forms of letters, and one that had better be examined elsewhere, especially as I shall have occasion to show that Prinsep's first theory on the subject attempted far too comprehensive a range, when it proposed to attribute all changes and transitions to the action of time alone, without reference to the many incidental circumstances that necessarily exercise an influence upon the progressive developments of chirography. Still, with every reserve, these inscriptions must be pronounced infinitely anterior to the date certain writers have of late pretended to assign to the introduction of Krishna into the Hindú Pantheon.

Fig. 3, pl. ix., is a copy of an imperfect legend on the lid of a brass casket, which seems to have enclosed the usual silver and gold boxes devoted to the enshrinement of relics. These formed part of Mr. Masson's final despatch from Afghánistán, and reached England too late for notice in the Ariana Antiqua.' Prof. Wilson is unable to trace the exact locality whence these objects were procured, and the inscription itself is too much worn and abraded to admit of any consecutive definition of the letters. I have inserted it chiefly on account of the date, which will be seen to be identical with that on the Manikyála stone.

I have devoted plate x. to the exhibition of the inscription