218 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY. [August, 1873. ordinarily to use either his right hand or his trenchant blade: bnt was content upon common occasions to rely on the club in his left, with which he actually knocked down two men in the affray that caused his final apprehension. The matchlock is in common use throughout the Presidency, and, as far as I am aware, there is no variety in its appearance or mechanism, although some barrels are made of Damascus twist, and some are rifled. The bore is invari¬ ably small, and the bullets used are frequently of iron. The best I have seen belonged to the Raja Ratansing Jadurao of Malegaum, near Baramati, and were said to be Rumi. INSCRIPTIONS ON A CANNON AT RANGPUR. BY G. H. DAMANT, B.C.S. Amongst a number of old cannons lying in front of the kachari at Rangpnr is one made of brass with a dragon’s mouth carved at the muzzle; it bears two inscriptions, one in Persian and the other in Sanscrit, and has the word ‘ Bundoola’ written on it in' English characters. The Persian inscription is as follows:—
The meaning appears to be:—11 During the reign of the king of kings, protector of the world, Nuruddin Jahangir BAdshah GhAzi, when the Khanzad Khan Eiroz Jang was Subadar, and Akhand Moulana Murshid was Minister, and Hakim Haidar Ali Darogha, and Pir Muham¬ mad and Sri Harihardas Amins of Bengal, this cannon was made of Jahangiri brass in Jahan- gimagar by Surmanath in the year 1021. The weight of the cannon with its carriage, by Jahangiri weight, is 619, 5113, TfT. The master of the ordnance was Sayyid Ahmad.” Jahangirnagar is either Gaur or Dhaka, most probably the latter. The figures given as the weight I cannot interpret, and should be glad of any information on the subject. The Sanskrit inscription is in Bengali charac¬ ters of an old type, approaching the Devana- gari, and is very much worn and difficult to make out, but BAbu RajendralAla Mitra has kindly given me the following transliteration and translation:— Sri sri svnrga Ndr ay ana deva saubhdre svara gadddhara sihhena yavanah jittd turdka hdryyd me, iviah sampruptah Sake 1604 :— I, Sri Sri Svarga Narayana Deva, lord of Saubhara, Gadadhara Sinha, having conquered the Yavanas and destroyed the Turaks, obtain¬ ed this in the Sak year 1604 = a.d. 1683. He says Svarga Narayana Deva is a com¬ mon title of the kings of Asam, and that Gada¬ dhara was reigning in a.d. 1683. The history of the gun appears to be—that it was made in Dhaka by the Musalmans in the reign of Jahangir and placed in one of their frontier posts, Rangamatiya probably, from whence it was taken by the Asamese in a.d. 1683. Lastly the Burmese general Bundoola conquered Asam in 1822, and probably this gun was amongst his captures; and in 1825 Asam was recaptured by Colonel Richards, who took two hundred pieces of cannon from Rangpur, the capital of Asam : it must have been about this time that the word “Bundoola” was written on the gun. The gun was brought to the kachari in 1862, after the mutiny, when the zamindArs were disarmed. THE NALADIYAR. BY THE REY. F. J. LEEPER, TRANQUEBAR. The Naladiyar is one of the few original works we have in Tamil. It contains altogether forty chapters, of ten stanzas each, on moral subjects. The origin of the name is thus told in the introduction of Father Beschi’s Shen Tamil Grammar :—“ Eight thousand poets visited the
