186

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

bing with shoemaker's heel-ball will be found a most satisfactory and expeditious method. The paper should be wove or printing paper, not thick; and care should be taken to rub the

[July, 1873.

methods must be adopted, which need not be detailed, as only professional experts could put them in practice. 4. Small inscriptions may be copied (in in

paper well down upon the inscription before

verse) by covering them with tin-foil and lay

applying the heel-ball, which should be rubbed gently over it, first in a direction making a small angle with the lines, and then at right angles to the first. Of course the slightest movement of the paper during the process spoils the copy. The smaller the letters and the less deeply cut they are, the finer and softer must be the paper. 2. Another process, better adapted for rougher surfaces, is to press or gently beat down the paper, which ought to be soft and very pliable, and may be slightly damped before apply ing it to the surface; then with a pad made of patti (cotton tape such as is used for bedsteads) wound tightly round a handle and covered with a piece of fine cotton, dab it over with thin Indian ink. A little practice will enable any one to make excellent copies in this way. 3. If an inscription is clearly cut in stone, a very good “estampage” may readily be obtained, in the manner described by Mr. Burnell, by means of the common whitey-brown coarse pa

ing over it a coat of wax pressed well down, and backed with a piece of pasteboard or thin board. From this a cast in plaster of Paris for a stereotype might be obtained. 5. For inscriptions whether in stone or metal, there is another easy process:–Rub the inscription over with coarse chalk, or lime (pipeclay will not answer) and water, letting it settle as much as possible in the letters. When it is just dry, with a hard pad that will not

per to be obtained in any native town. If the letters are large or deeply cut, and the wetted paper tears in beating it home, another wet sheet has only to be beat down over it, or even a third if thought desirable. When the inscrip tion is in cameo, as most of the Muhammadan

ones are, four or more thicknesses of paper may be required. When dry it can be peeled off, and forms a pretty stiff mould of the inscription.* Copper-plates may similarly be copied with a finer, thin, but tough paper, wetted, beat well in with a small hard brush, and the beating continued until the paper is quite dry. And when the plates have been much oxidized, as most of the Valabhi ones are, leaving a rough surface with but shallow traces of the letters,

and Mr. Burnell's process would not give a good reverse impression,-paper-squeezes made in

this way may often be found useful, especially if the letters are traced on the upper side of the squeeze with a fine black pencil. But to obtain perfect copies, in such cases, and they are of frequent occurrence,—other and more laborious

search into the letters, rub off the white colour

ing from the surface; then copy on tracing cloth or paper fixed over it:-the white in the letters will render them perfectly legible through the tracing cloth. Inscriptions thus prepared may also be photographed with a copying lens,

and the negative should be intensified in a bath of bichloride of mercury and washed with hydrosulphate of ammonia or a thin solution of hyposulphate of soda. For this process it would however be better to whiten only the surface and

have the letters dark. Negatives so prepared are suited for zincographic printing. The knowledge of these processes may be useful to private individuals desirous to obtain copies of inscriptions they may come across, but it is not to be expected that many should learn to use them with perfect succes, still less that an amateur here and a dilettante there, in so

vast a country as India, should contribute much to the formation of a Corp us in scrip tion u m In dic a rum, such as any other government but an English one would long ago have set about. There seems to be only one feasible way of preparing such a body of in scriptions: the work must be entrusted to one skilled hand having the use of at least a portion of the resources of a lithographic or photozinco graphic office, one or two of the lads of which he could speedily train in all the processes required. Portable inscriptions, such as copper plates, could be copied and printed rapidly and at comparatively small expense. For the stone inscriptions, estampages should in the first

• This process is also applicable for taking, moulds from sculptures in basso-rilievo. But see Dr. Forbes Watson's

Report on the Illustration of the Archaic Architecture of India, pp. 39 and 45, and Mr. Lottin de Laval's Manual Complet de Lottino-plastique, Paris, 1857.