Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/109

 and 2 are very uncertain. Another (XI), on the east side, bearing a swastika followed by Om Sri Q-anemya namah, has at the end (though almost illegible) *Sam(v)at 1820 ' = 1763. Yet another (IX), also on the eastern wall, concludes, ' Samvat 1839 ' = 1782 A.D. (the last cipher being slightly broken); while still another (V), on the northern side, closes, as I read it, with ' 1840 ' = 1783 a.d.^ They all belong, therefore, to the eighteenth century.

Besides the total of fifteen inscriptions, dated or undated, within the circumvallation, there are two more on the outside, connected with the square tower near the northeast corner. The lower one of these (XVI) is inscribed on a black stone over the arch, facing east ; it begins with the common Ganesh formula, mentions Jvala-Ji, the divinity of fire, and concludes with the date 'Samvat 1866 ' = 1809 a.d. The upper one (XVII), placed on the outside of the story above, is likewise in Nagari, but is less clearly written, and the close is hardly legible in my photograph, which was taken with difficulty, as I had to be held up over the top of the high doorway while I made the snapshot. The tablet has been stupidly set in, or reset, upside down, and below it is scrawled in Russian block letters the name ' N. Mintova.'

As I secured photographs of all the inscriptions, and the majority were successful, in case the tablet photographed was still legible,^ it will be possible to study them in greater detail later, and I hope to publish them elsewhere in co-operation with Dr. Abbott, whose interest in the subject has already been proved.^

1 Of this latter tablet I have two visit to Baku that copies of the in-

2 Inscription X (small) on the east by Dorn, Atlas einer Beise im Kau- side was wholly illegible, but I photo- kasus^ St. Petersburg, 1871, reissued in graphed it also. As most of the tab- 1895 by the press of the Royal Acad- lets are of cement, and the letters emy of St. Petersburg, in Russian, and raised, they are peculiarly vulnerable also in German as Atlas zu Bemerk- to the attacks of the elements. ungen einer Beise in dem Kaucasus

8 I did not know until after my last und den sudlichen Kustenldndern des

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