________________
FEBRUARY, 1892]
DATE OF THE BOWER MANUSCRIPT.
these characters being, as Professor Kielhorn explains, the well-known (Sarada. Judging from these characters, all that one could say would be that the grant may date from any time after 500 A, D., which, of course, would be a futilo proposition.
The main argument for the age of the Bower MS. is the preservation in it of the old form of ya. No objection can be raised on the ground that the old form was preserved much longer in the South Indian and the North-Eastern Indian (Nepalese) alphabets. As these alpbabets differ from the North-Western Indian, which is used in our MS., any conclusions, drawn from the circumstances of those alphabets, have no applicability to our MS. It stands to reason that no scribe, used to his own North-Western Indian alphabet, would, in writing a MS., think of introducing the old form of a letter, which did not exist any more in his own alphabet, from another alphabet, unfamiliar to him, in which it did still exist.
POSTSCRIPT. Since writing most of the above remarks I have, as already stated, read and transcribed nearly the whole of the manuscript. I have carefully noted every occurrence of the akshara yo, yo, yai, and yau.
In the portions B, C, D, I have found the cursive form (either transitional or modern) used not once. The aksbaras yai and yau never occur; the akshara yé occurs 19 times (B 4,13, D 2), always with the old form of ya. The akshara yó occurs 9 times (B 7, D 2), again always with the old form.
In the portions A and E, the case stands thus: there are altogether 333 cases of the occur. rence of those aksharas, viz., 202 of yé, 125 of yo, 4 of yai and 2 of yau. In every case of yai and yau the transitional form J is used. With yé and yô the transitional form is used 227 times, and the modern form a, 16 times. The transitional form occurs 117 times with yé, 110 times with yo, 4 times with yai, and twice with yau. The modern form occurs 12 times with ye, and 4 times with yo. Altogether the cursive form occurs 249 times. The old form occurs 73 times with yé and 11 times with yô. The following table exhibits this :
Aksharas:
Totals.
yai 0
yau 0
Old ........................ Transitional ............ Modern .......................
yo 11 1, 110
:
84 233249
»
0
16445
Total ...
ye 202
yo 125
yai 4
yau 2
333
Now with regard to point No. 3 (see p. 35), there being 249 cursive forms to 84 old ones among a total of 333 cases, the proportion of cursire to old forms is as 3 to 1. With regard to the point No. 4, there being 233 transitional to 16 modern forms among a total of 249 cases, the proportion of transitional to modern forms is as (about) 15 to 1. In both cases, it will be seen, the evidence of the entire manuscript most accurately bears out the evidence of the specimen pages (see p. 37) and thus confirms my conclusions based on the latter. I may add with regard to the points Nos. 1 and 2, that in the portions A and E, the cursive (transitional or modern) form never occurs in any other akshara but those four: yé, yo, yai, yau. With the aksharas ya, ya, yi, yi, yu, yu, in every case, without any exception, the old form N. is used. The occurrence of these six aksharas, especially of ya and ya is very frequent, and this fact all the more accentuates the striking circumstance that the cursive form is only employed with the vowels é, ê, ai, and au. There must have been some reason for this peculiarity, - perhaps one of mere convenience of writing, though I cannot suggest any satisfactory one. I should note, that the vowels é, 6, ai, and au are drawn, both with the old and the tursive forms, in every possible variety : entirely side-marked, marked half op side and half on top, and entirely top
