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No. 41.)
A NEW ASOKAN INSCRIPTION FROM TAXILA.
No. 41.-A NEW ASOKAN INSCRIPTION FROM TAXILA.
By DR. E. HEBZFELD. [The inscription which is published below was discovered at Taxila by Sir John Mar. shall who gave a facsimile of it in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for 1914-15 as well as in his Guide to Taxila In both these publications he has recognised the special bearing it has on the origin of the Kharoshthi alphabet. That it was a new inscription of Asoka, the great Mauryan Emperor, was not known till recently when its contents were deciphered by Dr. Herzfeld, who communicated his interpretation of it to Sir John Marshall in the following letter. To place this discovery before scholars, his letter is published as it is, though it is not in the usual form of an article. Even the transliteration has not been disturbed.-ED.]
DEAR SIR JOHN,
While trying to decipher the Aramaic inscription of Darius which I had dis. covered in 1923 on his tomb at Naqsh i Rustam, I gathered all the Aramaic material accessible to me here in Teheran, where I am almost deprived of all books, and thus I came once more upon the squeeze of the Taxila inscription which you had been kind enough as to send me long ago, and which accompanies me on my various travellings. Having even not your "Guide to Taxila " nor the publication in the Ind. Arch. Sury. at my disposal, I am unable to quote the work of deciphering that has already been done, nor can I take the great advantage of making use of such work. Moreover, having no sort of Aramaio glossary at my hand, the only thing left to me is just to let you know my reading of the letters, as far as I am able to read, being no Aramaist at all. Nevertheless, the little I can do, may prove useful to other scholars, and in spite of its unsatisfactory condition, I thought it worth not to keep it back entirely. The following is a transcript of the inscription in Hebrew and Latin characters :.ni ...
.. ut. 14/kmyrty '1 kynvta 1
לכמירתי על
כינותא על אכזי שכינותא ולאבוהי הוה הופתיחתי זנה
a"/k/n zy skynvta
labvhy huli
hvptyxty znh na
zk bhvv d/n/rh. 8. 19. van
hvbětv k/rzy hut 9. 7779 1870
mran prydr 10. mah..
h.. ikvth 11. 1712 71
vap bnvhy 12. VT AD 1870
Imran prydrš Fig. 1 is a drawing of the inscription, exactly reduced to a quarter of its natural size. Fig. 2 gives an analysis of the Aramaic alphabet. These two drawings claim to be perfootly exact, as they are made directly from the squeeze by an extraordinary fine instrument
1 P. 25 ff. 3 Pp. 75-76.
