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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(MAY, 1913.
I am sending a second pull of the first photograph. I also send you a second photograpb, showing the various pieces in different positions, which will therefore be useful. I imagine they have been printed as dark as possible to facilitate reproduction.7
No. IX. Mr. W. W. Skeat to Sir R. Temple. 7 November 1904. I send a set of photographs of the tin currency in my collection at the Cambridge Museum.18 The specimens have each been taken separately. Note that which is described in the Curator's report as possessing ridged markings on the side. This coin belongs to a slightly different type, the sections lacking the usual step and curving upwards to the top: thus Zomas against the usual
Two of the faces have the curious ridged markings already mentioned ; one resembling the Roman numeral II and the other IIII. The top of this specimen is marked by a cross, which corresponds to the usual tampok manggis (mangosteen rosette), as it is called in Malay. The photographs are half size.
No X. Mr. W. W. Skeat to Sir R. Temple. 7 March 1907. Dr. Harrison of the Horniman Museum (Forest Hill, London) was sent round to me from the British Museum in connection with two specimens of the tin currency found there. I asked him for photographs and he has courteously sent me the enclosed, recording in each case the weight and dimensions. No. 1 is a gambar belalang or mantis ingot. The disposition of the wings, shape of the head and eye, and the segmentation of the tail part of the body are all very clearly marked. No. 2 is, I take it, a gambar kurakura or tortoise ingot, showing the shell marks. Both are of bright new tin, as fresh as when first cast. There seems to me a possible connection in shape between the mantis and the long tin slab (köping)
and also between the tortoise and the round tin piece (jongkong)
shaped like a rather flat bowl, into which form the superfluous tin is still cast in the Malay Peninsula, when there is insufficient metal left over at the smelting to form a slab.
(To be continued.)
THE INSCRIPTION OF ARA.1
BY PROF. H. LUDERS, PA.D.; BERLIN. . The Kharoshthi inscription treated here was discovered in a well in a ndld called Ara, 2 miles from Bâgnilâb. It is now in the museum at Lahore. Mr. R. D. Banerji was the first to bring it to our notice. In publishing it (ante, vol. XXXVII, page 58), he expressed the expectation that I should succeed in completely deciphering the text. I regret that I am not able wholly to respond to the expectation. The last line of the inscription remains obscure though the script is here partly quite clear. I believe, however, to have been able to read so far the remaining portion of the inscription with the help of the impression which I owe to the kindness of Dr. Fleet, that at the most there will remain doubt ag regards the two names in the fourth line. 11 These two photographs form figs. 1 and 2 of Plate II.
$ Plates I. and III. I Translated by Mr. G. K, Nariman from the Sitrungsberichte der Preussiachen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1912, pp. 824 ff, and revised by the author.
* It is the same after which the phototype has been reproduced in this Journal.
