Epigraphia Indica Vol 19

Author(s): Hirananda Shastri
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India

Page 20

No. 1.]
THE ZED A INSCRIPTION OF THE YEAR 11.
of Sanskrit Whāta, a ditch, a fosne, a well, and he connected it with the following six letters, which he read uephanth ahasa, and the word danamukha which follows later an, the meaning of the whole being, according to him : the donation of Usphamu..cha, a well. I may state at once that ap interpretation which reckons with three different donations, by different persons, recorded in one and the same epigraph, is not in scordance with the practice in Kharoshthi inscriptions and a priori very unlikely to be right. The supposed personal name Usphamu..cha has, moreover, & rather suspicious look, and, finally, this reading is almost certainly wrong.
Professor Lüderst saw that the second akshara has an e-matrå and read khane, and he rightly read the next two letters kue, corresponding to kupe in the Ara inscription, explaining khape kue as a dug well, as distinguished from a natural one. He also pointed out that the form kue is used in the Pāja and Muchai inscriptions. A similar form kuo also occurs in the Mount Banj epigraph. This analysis shows the way to the correct interpretation of our record, and there is only one point where I think it necessary to deviate from him. The second akshara cannot be ne, because the e-stroke is never added at the bottom of the vertical of na. We find it above the top in Kaneshkasa in the Māņikiāla inscription, and, as I have already remarked, it sometimes occupies the same place in our record. Our akshara is in reality identical with the de of deva putra in the Ara inscription and we must certainly read khade, corresponding to Sanskrit khäta, dug.
Then follow four aksharas, which were read kharadasa by Cunningham. The first one was left untransliterated by M. Senart, while M. Boyer read mu and Professor Lüders ve. Cunningham's kha is out of the question, and so far as I can see M. Boyer was right in reading mu. Professor Lüders-states that ve is fairly clear in an estampage in his possession. A comparison of the estampage before me and M. Senart's plate seems, however, to show that the apparent va is in reality the continuation of the long fissure running below the ensuing seven aksharas. The next letter was read as ra by Cunningham, but Professor Lüders is no doubt right in stating that it may be ro. I fail to understand how Messrs. Senart and Boyer arrive at their reading cha of the third akshara. It is certainly da as read by Cunningham.
Muradasa, or probably murodasa, is the genitive of a word murada or muroda, which has a distinctly un-Indian appearance. It is tempting to compare it with the words murta, murndaga and murunda, which seem to be different attempts at rendering a Saka word which the Indians sometimes translated with spāmin, and I think that we must accept that explanation. We know that the title murunda was used by Saka chieftains and Indo-Skythian rulers in India down to the 4th century A.D., when the Sakamurundas are mentioned in Samudragupta's Allahabad prasasti, and I do not think that it can reasonably be doubted that it was this game Sakamurunda or an older indigenous form of the word which the Chinese rendered with their Sai-wang, the designation of the tribe which was expelled by the Yüe-chi after the latter had been conquered by the Hiung-nu.8 I am aware of the fact that wang has been considered to be part of the name of the tribe, and not the usual word for "king","fuler", and that Professor A. Hermann, on the authority of the late Professor de Groot, wanted to change Sas-wang to Sai-yü, i.e., sak-yü or, according to the Nankin pronunciation, sak-giok, which he identified with Sacaraucae. The difficulty, however, which has puzzled some Sinologists in the designation Sai-wang, Saka lords, or, Saka kings, and caused them to try to find another explanation of the word vang, seems to me to disappear in the face of the corresponding designation Sakamurunda. The Indian translation of this term by Sakansipati is an exact parallel to the Chinese word.
11.c. * Cl. Laders, 8. B. A. W., 1013, pp. 422 f.; Konow, 8. B. A. W., 1916, pp. 790 ff.; Das inde Drama, $18.
. Cf. .9., 0. Franko, Beiträge aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der Türkvölker und Skyllen Zentra abiens. Berlin, 1907, pp. 48 ff.
• Pauly's Real Encyclopädie der Classischen Altertumsewinenachaft, sub roce Sacaracao.
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