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best of good poets as being the ground (supporting) a star-high Tärä's Mountain of dignity, and to the devoted virtuous Rēkāmbika-dēvi was born a son, the minister Sayideva, a minister who terrified foes.
(Verse 14.) As with Rama Rama [Sita] is radiantly present, as with the Lord of the Gods [Indra] Paulomi, as with the Home of Fortune [Vishnu] Lakshmi, as with the Disembodied One's Foe [Śiva] Uma-devi, as with the Stars' Lover [Chandra] the lady Robipi, so with the blest Savidēva, majestic among ministers (?) was Savitri, exceedingly faithful to her lord, conspicuous.
(Lines 33-34.) So to this Svamideva and Savitri-devi
(Verse 15.) To the brilliant blest Svamideva and to the devoted virtuous Savitri was born one enjoying fortune, having the radiance of the sun, the lotus of whose heart was void of fear, that seed of righteousness, a Cupid to radiant ladies, a celestial tree to sages, a meeting-place for the goddess Fame, a lord of the ocean of his own high verses of prayer, a most magnificent king of the sumanas, this Rēchirăja.
No. 20.-TAXILA INSCRIPTION OF THE YEAR 136.
BY STEN KONOW.
This inscription was discovered by Sir John Marshall in the course of his excavations at Ancient Taxila during the winter 1912-13, and published by him in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1914,3 with additions and a plate in the same Journal for 1915.4 Valuable remarks have further been published by Messrs. Thomas, Fleet, Boyer,7 and Bhandarkar, and the record has been utilised in my Indo-Scythian Contributions. It is of such importance that it is advisable to record it in the pages of the Epigraphia.
Concerning the discovery of the inscription Sir John states that it was "made in a small chapel immediately west of the so-called 'Chir' stupa. The chapel in question is built in a small diaper type of masonry, which came into vogue at Taxila about the middle of the first century A.D. and lasted for about a hundred years. Its entrance faced the main stupa, and near the lack wall opposite this entrance, and about a foot below the floor, I found a deposit consisting of a steatite vessel with a silver vase inside, and in the vase an inscribed scroll and a small gold casket containing some minute bone relics. A heavy stone placed over the deposit had, unfortunately, been crushed down by the fall of the roof and had broken both the stestite vessel and the silver vase, but had left the gold casket uninjured and chipped only a few fragments from the edge of the scroll, nearly all of which I was, happily, able to recover by carefully sifting and washing the earth in the vicinity. The cleaning and transcription of the record was a matter of exceptional difficulty, as the scroll, which is only 6 inches long by 14 inches wide and of very thin metal, had been rolled up tightly, face inwards, in order that it might be enclosed in the silver vase; moreover, the metal of which it is composed is silver alloyed
1 This seems to be the Kishkindha-parvata in Odra-desa, on which Devi was worshipped by the name of Tärä (Matsya Purana, xiii. 46), being apparently identified with the epic heroine Tära, the wife of Välin (Ramayana, IV. 15 ff.; Mahabharata, Prat. Ray's edn. III. 279).
Meaning either "king of sages" or "king of gods" (Indra), according as we translate sumanas. Pp. 973 ff.
Pp. 191 ff.; compare also Archeological Survey of India, Annual Report, 1912-13, pp. 18 ff. JRAS., 1914, pp. 987 ff. 1915, pp. 155 .
JRAS., 1914, pp. 992 f.; 1915, pp. 314 ff. Ind. Ant., 1916, pp. 120 f.
1 Jo. Asiat., XI, v, pp. 281 2. 8BAW., 1916, pp. 787 .
