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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
VOLUME XXIV.
No. 1.-THE BAJAUR CASKET OF THE REIGN OF MENANDER.
By N. G. MAJUMDAR, M.A., INDIAN MUSEUM, CALOUTTA. The inscriptions edited here occur on a steatite casket which comes from Shinkot in Bajaur territory. The place is about twenty miles to the north-west of the confluence of the Panjkora and Swat rivers, beyond the borders of the North-West Frontier Province, where the casket was discovered by some tribal people while digging the foundations of a new fort. The territory of Bajaur, representing a part of the ancient province of Udyāna, is practically an unexplored country, and the present find is therefore of unusual interest. The only other mentionable object discovered in this region is the seal of Theodamas which was first published by Senart. The steatite casket is said to have encased a casket of silver, which in turn contained a gold reliquary and some ashes, but the silver and gold articles are no longer traceable. The outer casket together with some fragments of its lid has been recovered through the efforts of Mian Afzal Shah, son of Khan Bahadur Mian Rahim Shah, C.I.E., of Ziarat Kaka Sahib in Peshawar District. At the request of Rao Bahadur K. N. Dikshit, Director General of Archæology in India, Mian Afzal Shah has very generously presented the casket to the Archaeological Department and it has been lent for exhibition to the Indian Museum, Archaeological Section, Calcutta. I am deeply obliged to Rao Bahadur Dikshit for having permitted me to edit the inscriptions and also for the help I have received from him in manifold ways.
The casket is a flat, bowl-shaped vessel of dark steatite having a flanged base all round, 1.3" in width. The diameter of the casket at the mouth is 8.8" and at the base 11.3", and the diameter of the lid is also, 11.3." The depth of the bowl is 1.9", and the casket including the lid measures 3-3" in height. Excepting a few indented lines in the form of concentric rings encircling the body of the casket and its lid at six different places, it bears no other decoration.
The characters appearing on the casket are Kharoshthi, as may be expected in the locality from which it comes. The inscriptions are engraved along the rim of the lid (A), around its centre (A and C) and on its inner face (A'), also in the concave portion of the casket (B and D) and on its back (E). The longest one of the inscriptions is marked D, the lines of which are disposed of in the form of a spiral, as in the case of the Relic Casket of the year 303 from Charsadda." As only a few fragments of the lid have been recovered it has not been possible to restore the entire text of Inscriptions A, A+, A. and C. The rest of the inscriptions, however, have been completely made out, as the bowl of the casket, although slightly cracked, is in a fair state of preservation.
The engraving of letters has not been carried out in the same uniform style throughout, and from this point of view the inscriptions may be classified under two distinct groups In A, A', A and B the letters are formed by bold and deeply incised strokes, while in C, D and Ethe
1 Journal Asiatique, VIII, xiii (1889), pp. 364 ff; and Konow, C. 1. 1., Vol. II, Pt. I, p. 6. . See pp. 8 ff. below
