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No. 19.]
BRAHMI INSCRIPTION ON A WOODEN PILLAR FROM KIRARI.
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so often found at the end of the manuscript copies of Sanskirt books. How faithful his copy is can be judged from the facsimile of the mechanical impressions of the portions which were copied when I first inspected the pillar in 1921 and which were still intact when I again examined it in 1924 at the Nagpur Museum. Comparison will show that the eye-copy can be taken as quite trustworthy in the case of the portions which are now lost for ever. The fact that the copyist did not even understand which side represented the top and which the bottom of the lettering precludes the suspicion of forgery altogether. How he succeeded in bringing out the shapes of the letters accurately is, I think, due to the little knowledge of drawing which he possessed and to his intelligence. But as the fact remains that those portions of the epigraph do not exist now, we would naturally feel hesitant to draw large conclusions from the hand-copy. The Pandit took a copy of not less than 349 aksharas whereas at the time of my first inspection the pillar had not more than 60 or 70 letters and now not more than 30 or 40 including the traces of vowel marks. The Pandit's eye-copy was handed over to my draftsman at the time of my visit to Kirāri and I have used it in preparing the comparative facsimile plate as well as in reading the lost portion for which it was the only source now to depend upon.
The find was next brought to the notice of Pandit Lochan Prasad Pandeya of Balpur, & village attached to the Chandarpur Post Office, not very far off from Kirāri. He promptly brought it to the notice of Sir John Marshall under whose instructions the pillar was immersed in water in a tank at Kirāri where it lay till it was finally removed to the Government Museum at Nagpur' after being very carefully treated chemically for the preservation of the writing on it. The Museum authorities have now cut it into two parts, one of which, i.e., the upper portion, they have placed in a glazed case, accommodating the other in an outer verandah of the Museum. The former still shows not less than twenty-two continuous letters more or less distinctly, while the latter retains traces of lettering here and there and some three or four complete aksharas as well. The fate of the lower portion cannot fail to remind us of the all powerful law of nature which permits the survival of the fittest only!
As has been stated above, the pillar is wooden and measures about 13' 9" from top to bottom. It is surmounted by a solid kalasa which is about 1' 2" high. The kalasa has a narrow neck, a broad and almost flat mouth, the body being more elliptical than round. I am reproducing here two of the photographs which were taken at the time of my inspection during 1921 to replace further description of this interesting find. The surface of the pillar has badly flaked and I cannot positively say if it was shaped into facets and planed, at least at the middle, for writing the inscription. The lower portion, in all probability, must have been left unshaped, as it was meant for insertion in the ground. I got a few chips of the pillar examined and am told that the tree of which it was made belongs to the order of Leguminosae papilionaceae and its botanical name is Pterocarpus mareupium, the Hindi name being Bijā Sal. This tree gives a handconte and useful tiraber of Central India and is almost as good as teak.
This find, I believe, is the first of its kind yet made in India. So far some four sacrificial posts have been found in this country and perhaps a similar number in Koetei in the Indian Archipelago. All these have recently been noticed by Dr. Vogel in his paper on the Yöpa Inscrip tions of king Mūlavarmman. They are all of stone and appear to be memorial gūpas for, sacrificial yūpas, as would be shown by the terms yūpa-dru, yüpa-druma o: yüpa-dāru, were usually made of wood. Possibly these were put up instead of the wooden pillars or yūpas and were their exact copies in stone. A close comparison of the illustrations of these pillars and of the one represented on the asvamëdha coins of Samudragupta the Great, with the photograph of the Kirări pillar, herein reproduced, will show that the latter cannot be a yüpa or sacrificiul poat. The description given of a yüpa in the Satapatha-Brāhmana would point towards the same inference
