the five castes. Thus, it is obvious that these three translations do not agree, that the first and third coincide more with each other than they do with the second; that, for that reason, the first and last translations deserve more to be believed than the second, which stands alone; but that this, for that very reason, does not prove what it, properly speaking, ought to prove, and, whereas I am not acquainted with the Malabar language, I prefer to refrain from giving my opinion on the subject. For hitherto I have been unable to come across, either among the people of Malabar and Canara, or among the literary priests and natives, any one who was clever enough to translate these old characters for the fourth time, notwithstanding the fact that I had sent a copy of these characters to the north and south of Cochin, in order to have them deciphered.
"'The witnesses who were present at the granting of this charter differ also. The first and third translations, however, seem also to concur more with each other than with the second one. But the discrepancy of the second translation lies in this, that in it not the personal names of the witnesses are recorded, but only their offices or dignities, in which they officiated at that time; whereas the mistake in the first and third translations consists herein, that the witnesses are called kings, and more so of those places by which names these places were called some time after and subsequently when times had changed, and by which names they are still known. The second translation, however, calls them merely heads of the countries, in the same manner as they were known at the time of the Emperor, when these heads were not as yet kings, because these heads bore the title of king and ruler only after the well-known division of the Malabar Empire into four chief kingdoms,
