Collection of Prakrit and Sanskrit Inscriptions

Author(s): P Piterson
Publisher: Bhavnagar Archiological Department

Page 12

INTRODUCTION.
THE collection which follows opens, as is fitting, with the rock inscriptions of King Asoka at Junaghar, undoubtedly the most importtant of all Indian inscriptions and second to none in interest that have yet come to light over the expanse of the civilised world. I will speak of their discovery, their decipherment, and their contents in that order. And first of their discovery.
Of course there is a sense in which the great rock to the right as you enter the gorge in the hills which leads from Junaghar to the sacred Girnar was never lost. The strange characters with which it is covered must always have excited the wonder of the passer-by, even when for long ages that wonder had ceased to be intelligent, But the rock and its record were unknown to modern research and to Western enquirers until brought to notice by that enthusiastic antiquarian Colonel James Tod, author of the Annals of Rajasthan and Travels in Western India. It is due to him to give his account of the rock in his own words. After describing the causeway built by the magnificent vanity of Sundarji, the horse merchant," to make smooth the pilgrim's way to the holy hill, Tod goes on as follows:
"Leaving the bridge, lot mo describe what to the antiquary will appear tho noblest monument of Saurashtra, a monument speaking in an unknown tongue of other times and calling to the Frank vidyavân, or savant, to remove the spell of ignorance in which it has been enveloped for ages. Again thanks to Sundarji, but for whose liberality it would still have remained embosomed in the pathless forest, covered with its tangled veil of the impervious babool, The memorial in question, and evidently of some great conqueror, is a hugo hemispherical mass of dark granite, which, like a wart upon the body, has protruded through the crust of mother curth, without fissure or inequality, and which, by the aid of the iron pen, has bcon converted into a book. The measurement of its area is nearly 90 feet: its surface is divided into compartments or parallelograms, withip which are inscriptions in the usual antique charact Each letter is about two inches long, most symmetrically formed, and in perfect preservation. I may well call it a book; for the rock is covered with these characters, so uniform in execution that we may safely pronounce all those of the most ancient class, which I designate the Pandu character, to be the work of one man. But who was this man ?"
Aho! Shrutgyanam