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No. 39.]
KALAWAN COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF THE YEAR 134.
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No. 39.-KALAWAN COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF THE YEAR 134.
BY STEN KONOW. Kalawān is the name of a site near ancient Takshasilā where Sir John Marshall has been oonducting excavations during the winter 1931-32. It is situated about three miles to the southeast of Sirkap, on one of the many flat-topped eminences jutting out on the north side of the Margalla hills.
Sir John there found remains of a monastery and a stūpa-chapel with Gandhāra sculptures in good style.
The stupa was eight-sided and stood in the eight-sided apse of the chapel, which was originally roofed over, like the apsidal chapels at the Chir Tope and in Sirkap, but its plan differs somewhat from the ordinary apsidal temples.
Under the foundations of the stupa was found & copper-plate, which can confidently be stated to have been deposited at the time of its erection. It proved to contain a Kharoshthi inscription in five lines, and Sir John has, with his usual skill, succeeded in cleaning it, so that every detail is clearly visible in the excellent photographs which he was good enough to give me when I met him in London in May, 1932.
The inscription is of considerable importance, and Sir John therefore allowed me to publish a preliminary account in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1932, pp. 949 and ff.
The letters are of the same kind and type as in the Taxila silver scroll of the year 136. They consist of dots punched into the plate, and the execution is comparatively careful. There is, however, a superfluous dot in the upper right-hand corner of thu, the last akshara of l. 2, and, on the other hand, the loop denoting ante-consonantic is incomplete in sarvasti, 1. 4, only three dots having been punched in, while the wrong subscript u in -svatvana instead of -satvana, 1. 5, may be due to & slip in the original draft.
The alphabet is Kharoshthi, of the same type as in the silver scroll, cf. inter alia the short projection of the vertical bar of sa. Of individual characters we may note the rare akshara chha in Chhadafilae, 1.2, the very distinct tea in samvatsaraye, 1. 1, and the superscript line which we know from the Dutreuil de Rhins manuscript and the Kharoshthi documents from Central Asia, and which is also found above sha in the word tasha, Skr. trishna, in the Kurram casket inscription, while the Kanhiāra record uses a dot in the word Krishayasa, Skr. Krishnayasas. In the Corpus I have rendered this line or dot with a dash, writing tash'a, Krish'ayasa, respectively. In our inscription the line occurs in the word sh'ushaehi, Skr. snushakābhyām. Professor Rapson has shown that sha with the superscribed line stands for shna in Central Asian documents, and it is possible that the was actually sounded. I shall therefore write shnushaehi, but I am by no means certain that this writing is a correct rendering of the sound.
Of numerical symbols we find those for 1, 3, 4, 10, 20 and 100.
With regard to the shape of individual letters, it will be seen that the bottom of ha is angular in graha, gaha, 1. 2; putrehi, 1. 3 ; shnushaehi, l. 4; hotu, 1. 5, but rounded in graha, 1. 3. We may further note the upward bend of the bottom of ta in the compounds tva, 1.5, and téa, 1.1; cf, the tva of the silver scroll and the tea of the Patika, Pāja, and Sue Vihār inscriptions. The post-consonantic r is usually more or less rounded ; cf. gra, 11. 2, 3; tra, ll. 1, 3; dra, ll. 2, 4; dhra, 11. 2, 4; pra, 11. 2,5; bra, 1. 1. It is, however, angular in gra, 1.5; bhra, 1. 3. Ante-conso
1 [Sir John Marshall while sonding me the photographs for preparing the facsimile tells me that the oppor. plato measuros 8.85 by 2-85 inches and weighs 879 grains.--Ed.)
.Kharopthi Inscription, discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in Ohinne Turkestan, p. 321.
