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No. 33.]
FOUR EARLY INSCRIPTIONS.
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with ink-impressions, squeezes and photographs, and I have to thank him for references and suggestions so that my part has been merely to reconsider the reading and translatioa of the inscriptions.
A.-On the bronze casket from Māņikiala. The casket, which is of bronze, was found in a stapa at Mānikiāla, & village and group of ruins some twenty miles south-cast from Rawalpindi (Imp. Gas., XVII, p. 182), and its discovery is described in Prinsup's Essays, Vol. I. PP. 96 #. (with illustrations Nos. 20a and 20) in the plate annexed thereto) and by Cunningham in the Archeological Survey of India, Vol. II (1871), pp. 161-62, where it is called a cylinder. It is now in the British Museum.
The casket is cylindrical, 5-3 inches (135 mm.) high and 3.5 inches (90 mm.) in diameter, with a pinnacle 35 inches (90 mm.) high on its lid. Around on the top of the lid runs the inscription, in Kha:dahthi characters formed of small dots punched into the metal as in some other cases, and the last four letters are inserted, because of want of room in the main line, beneath the preceding word, but the space is hardly large enough for the proper delineation of their lower portions. Hiy. A, I, on the annexed plate, is a reduced reproduction from & photograph taken from above the lid, and displays the record as it lies on the lid, except that it fails to show the lower portion of the lart letter. Honce fig. A, II, which is a full-size reproduction from an ink impression, has beea added; the gap in it was unavoidable because of the sloping shape of tae lid. I havu inspected the casket and compared the two illustrations with the inscription.
TEXT. 1 Kavosias-chhatrapasa Granakpvaka-chhatrapa-putrasa
dana-musho
TRANSLATION. Of the Satrap Kavosia, sou of the Satrap Ganakpvaka, the choice gift.
REMARKS. Kavosia. The doubtful letter is the second. It seems to be no rather than ti, because the vowel siga does not extend above the v, except in one dot; compare this sign with the s-sign in the next letter fi. Even if read as Kavišia, the word cannot mean " belonging to the town Kapisa", for two reasons: (1) if it is so taken, the donor would not mention his name, but merely call himself "Satrap of Kapiśā "; and this is wholly improbable, because donors always mentioned their names, and natarally 80 :* (2) he mentions his father's name, Ganakpvaka, and it is not credible he should do that and yet not mention his owu name. Kavosia, or Kaviria,
1 E.g. (1) Kanishka's rolic-casket from Peahāwar (Archeological Survey of India, 4 mual Report, 1904-9, plates 12, 13, at p. 60); (2) the Taxila record of Möga and Patika of the year 78 (Ep. Ind., Vol. IV, p. 65): (3) the Wardak vase (Ep. Ind., Vol. XI, p. 202); () the Taxila inscription of the year 186 (Jours. Roy. As. Soo, 1914, p. 979); and (5) to a certain extent, the Sué Vibår record of Kapish ka of the year 11 (Ind. An., Vol. X, p. 386).
In some similar casos excess syllables at the end were placed over the main text : thus, on the Piprahws relicTAGS the final syllables yanam are placed over the opening word Sukikbhatinan (see Antiquities in the Terai, plate 18, fig. 1. ; sud for a note on the bearing of the detail, see Dr. Fleet's remarks in Journ. Roy. As. Soo., 1906, p. 679): so also, on the Souári relic-vase the final syllables yata of the last words hēmavat-achariyata were placed over the letters tatāchari of those words and an upright stroke was added to mark the end plainly (Journ Rov. As. Soc., 1898, p. 579, plate, at top).
Or perhaps Kavifia.
. It is not a case of someone else referricg to the donor and posibly not knowing his name 1) it wing the donor himself who put this inscription on this naket.
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