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BO. 84.]
THREE SEMIMO INSCRIPTIONS FROM BHUJ.
301
It is highly improbable that an epitaph ofithis kind should bplong to Bhujionany other place in Northern India, and soabtless the Report of the Archeological Survey, Western Circle, 1916-17, p. 50, is right in supposing that all the three stones cameroriginally from South Arabis. perhaps from Aden. A number of tomb-inscriptions (of a later date) from the Jewish cemetery at Aden, were published in 1903.by H. P. Chajes in the Sitzb. d. ph.hist. Kl. d. k. Akademie of Vienna. As is well known, there have been Jewish settlers in South Arabia since early in the Christian era-if not before it.
The fact that this epitaph was associated with two South Arabian fragments is some reason for thinking that all three came originally from the same region. [A. Cowley].
On the two Him yaritic inscriptions which are on two smaller stones and bear South Arabian waiting Mayer-Lambert and Dr. Soy write
“The inscription in two lines (from left to right) is transcribed below :
Y
M
D
The second line is very clear, although W has never the form in Himyaritic but is always expressed by the form 0. It is a formula Wadd'ab (Wadd=father), frequently met with on talismans: see the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, Part IV, Volume II, page 178.
With regard to the first fine, I am not able to make it out and should think that, though it is very strange, it reads B(o)mb(a)y. The second inscription in one line reads:
5 м н м в с о which is entirely unintelligible. It may, perhaps, be read thus :
that is to say......QA, the son of Hamis'? though the meaning of BM=son is very doubtful. The monuments are probably bad copies of original stones. [ Mayer-Lambert ).
The rubbings are of two inscriptions, one of two lines (A), and the other of a single line (B).
Both the lines are read from left to right and, with the exception of the left hand letter of the top line, the reading seems to be obvious; the first letter (II) is probably ghain and, trangliterating into Arabic letters read from right to left, the inscription reads S ob
....Wadd'ab. The inscription thus belongs to the group of short Sabaean inscriptions, found on buildings and antlets, which mention Wadd'ab, Wadd'abum, Waddum, Abum, Abroadd or Abum Waddum; see Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, Part IV, Chap. IX, Art. VJ, Nos. 470-486. The Bombay Museum posseeses, in addition to the present, another in pription of this group
C.1.8. 482), first published by Bird in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. II, No. VIII, 1844, p.80, it was also published by W.F. Prideaux in the Tranacations of the Society of Biblical Archaplogy, VI, 1879, p. 305. This inscription is engraved over the figure pt a man wearing spend a loin cloth extending to the mees, but otherwise nude and has been interpreted as " image of Waddab."
