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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[Vol. XXI.
and account of it are based upon an impression sent to me by Dr. Hirananda Sastri, Government Epigraphist for India, and a photograph forwarded later by Rai Bahadur Dava Ram Sahni, Director-General of Archæology in India. Recently when the plaque was deposited in the Indian Museum, I was able to inspect it personally, and found, what I knew long ago, that it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of carefully examining the original whenever possible, as impressions and photographs are often not enough to enable a scholar to prepare an accurate transcript.
The inscription is incised on a piece of hard limestone which measures 31" 21"}". Though it is in a fragmentary condition, yet it is possible to determine, more or less approximately, what Was its original extent. That no complete line was engraved after the last line of this fragment can reasonably be inferred from the space remaining blank at the end, which is not less than what we find between any two actual lines of this epigraph. Again a careful examination of the stone shows that the original surface of its sides is still traceable here and there and that many letters, consequently, cannot have been destroyed from the sides. Thus while etan is the last word of 1.2, dhāniyam is the first word of l. 1. It is thus clear that the sides of the inscription have not been much damaged. One or two letters at the most may have been obliterated from each line whether at the beginning or at the end. Line 1 of our fragment cannot however be really the first line of the original inscription. But even here we mar be pretty sure that more than one line could not have been so effaced.
The fragment, as it is, contains six lines of writing in Brāhmi character of the Mauryan period. The alphabet remarkably resembles that of the Asokan records. The only difference that is perhaps worthy of note is that the vertical part of the letters t, p, h, v and s is a bit more prolonged than is generally seen in Asokan inscriptions. Our record again has one peculiarity wbich it shares in common with the Kälsi recension of the Fourteen Rock Edicts of Asoka. It is in regard to the letter 8 which occurs also in a form resembling sh. That these two forms do not mean two different letters in our inscription, namely, s and sh, is quite certain. The word saniragiyānam occurs twice, once in l. 1 and once in l. 3: and whereas the first letter in the first case is a clear s, it has the form of sh in the second. There can however be no doubt as to survragiyārain being the word intended. The sh-looking letter must therefore be regarded as a cursive form of 8 and has consequently to be read as s, and not sh. Similarly in regard to sulakhite (l. 2) and 81-atiyāyikasi (1. 5), the first letter in each one of these words is evidently su, but whereas the former character is distinctly 8, the latter looks like sh. This sh-like form is noticeable, as remarked above, in the Kālsi copy of Asokan Rock Edicts. Up till and including Rock Edict IX, the regular form of e is alone noticeable. In Rock Edict X the sh-like forin occurs side by side with the regular one. but the former is almost invariably prevalent in the subsequent Edicts. Perhaps Hultzsch is not right in reading it invariably as sh. as it seems to be but a cursive form of the regular 8.
As regards the language of our inscription, it is the same as the one used in the Pillar Ediets of Asoka. It was the language of the Madhvadēša influenced by Māgadhi or rather the court language of Magadha. Here we have to notice the change of r to land of the ending o to e. These are the peculiarities of Magadhi. We have, on the other hand, the dental & only as in the Pillar Edicts, and not the palatal & which is the third characteristic of Māgadhism according to the Prakrit grammarians. The locative singular ends in si, and never in e. As regards Orthography, we have to note first that the doubling of consonants caused by assimilation is not gra. phically shown. We have also to note the constant use of the perpendicular stroke as a ritāna or stop to mark the words and the clauses of the record. Instances of such upright virimas may be found in the Kālsi and Sahasrām Edicts of Asoka though there they are sometimes inserted meaninglessly. To give one instance, Kälsi Rock Edict XIII has the following: 4tha- [ra] sha
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