WCP3283

Letter (WCP3283.3251)

[1]

6, Huntingdon Road,

Cambridge.

11th Septr 1904

Dear Mr Sharpe1

I will take your [illeg.] seriation Sloka 83. The word is a misprint for ख प ऌपा by one's own wife[.]

Sloka 93 The first letter of the second Pāda of the second line is a vowel rî The word is ṛddhischittavikârinî[.]

Sloka 82 you will find the word आयाति in Mon. William's dict.2 p 148 Col 2 third word[.]

I am sorry I cannot read Mr Wallace's letter3 — It is quite illegible as the letters are not properly formed and they are not joined as in the ordinary Arabic. It is however interesting from [2] the point of view of being a primitive way of writing— I have seen something of the kind in some of the charms from the Maldives Islands that Mr Skeat4 was working at. But then these were words of known religious formula which one could read easily. If Mr Wallace remembers the writer and can give some hints as to what he might mean, I might try it again some other time & might also show it to Professor Bevan.5 The letter with its cover is herewith returned.

Yrs very truly | Syed Ali Bilgrami6 [signature]

P.S. I am going to [three words illeg.] All my people are there already.

S. A. Bilgrami7

Sharpe, Richard Bowdler (1847-1909). British ornithologist and museum curator. Founder of the British Ornithologists' Club in 1892.
Williams, Monier. 1899. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Etymologically and Philologically Arranged with Special Reference to Greek, Latin, Gothic, Geman, Anglo-Saxon, and Other Cognate Indo-European Languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Skeat, Walter William (1835-1912). British philologist. Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Cambridge, 1878.
Bevan, Anthony Ashley (1859-1933). British orientalist; professor of Arabic at Cambridge University 1893-1933.
Bilgrami, Syed Ali (1853-1911?). Indian civil servant, lecturer, translator and geologist.
In pencil in unknown handwriting.

Please cite as “WCP3283,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3283