May the name of the Khagan be holy!
Who pays him not reverence is to be slain, and must die!" The
inscriptions on the other plates discovered were essentially similar in
meaning. Our second plate shows one of them with the inscription in the
Uighur character.
The superficial dimensions of the Yenisei tablet, as taken from Schmidt's
full-size drawing, are 12.2 in. by 3.65 in. The weight is not given.
In the French texts nothing is said of the size of the tablets. But
Ramusio's copy in the Prologue, where the tables given by Kiacatu are
mentioned (supra, p. 35), says that they were a cubit in length and 5
fingers in breadth, and weighed 3 to 4 marks each, i.e. 24 to 32 ounces.
(Dupre de St. Maur, Essai sur les Monnoies, etc., 1746, p. viii.; also
(on saiga) see Pertz, Script. XVII. 357; Rubruq. 312; Golden
Horde, 219-220, 521; Ilch. II. 166 seqq., 355-356; D'Ohsson, III.
412-413; Q. R. 177-180; Ham. Wassaf, 154, 176; Makrizi, IV. 158;
St. Martin, Mem. sur l'Armenie, II. 137, 169; M. Mas Latrie in
Bibl. de l'Ec. des Chartes, IV. 585 seqq.; J. As. ser. V. tom. xvii.
536 seqq.; Schmidt, ueber eine Mongol. Quadratinschrift, etc., Acad. St.
P., 1847; Russian paper by Grigorieff on same subject, 1846.)
["The History tells us (Liao Shih, Bk. LVII. f. 2) that the official
silver tablets p'ai tzu of the period were 600 in number, about a foot
in length, and that they were engraved with an inscription like the above
['Our imperial order for post horses.
