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No. 27.) SEVEN BRAHMI INSCRIPTIONS FROM MATHURA AND ITS VICINITY. 201
TEXT. ........ sya(1) Kan(1)[sh]ka[sya]") ...... [1]*) .............[m]9...
........ ... etasya (1) purvaye M[@]thuri kalavad[8] o[dakh]i().. 3.................. ye Toshye patimā ......t().....
NOTES. (1) Probably to be restored mahārājasya. (2) Vogel : [H]uv[18h]ka[sya]. The first akshara is distinctly ka. The vowel-sign of the second akshara has disappeared, but the mātikā is distinctly na. The sh of shka and the sya are blurred, but certain. (3) Probably to be restored as samoatsare. (4) Of the seven or eight aksharas following [r], only the lower half of ma is distinct. The akshara before ma seems to have contained a subscript ma, so that the original reading may have been something like grishmamāse. (5) Traces of two aksharas before etasya are still visible, but it is impossible to read them. (6) Vogel : mathurikalavadap .. The ā-sign is not quite certain, but probable. The dot distinguishing the dental tha from tha is indistinct. The seventh letter is certainly da as read by Vogel, a similar form occurring in one of the Māt inscriptions, but there appears to be an a-sign attached to the letter. The reading of the last three aksharas is very uncertain. What Vogel reads as pa consists, as far as I see, of two letters. The first letter looks like an initial o, but in the middle of the vertical line of the letter there is a small horizontal stroke which might suggest to take the letter as au ; it is, however, probably only accidental. The second letter, the lower portion of which has disappeared owing to an erosion of the stone, may have been da. The same erosion has destroyed also the body of the last akshara which may have been khi. Possibly one akshara is lost at the end of the line. (7) The last ward also has become illegible on account of the peeling off of the stone with the exception of a subscript ta which must have belonged to the third letter of the word. The word is probably to be restored as patistā pita; cf. pratistapita in No. 45", prattistāpenti in No. 149. The slanting stroke to the left of the ta seems to have been caused by the erosion of the stone.
REMARKS. It is impossibe to offer a connected translation of the inscription, too much of the text being lost to fill up the gaps even conjecturally.
As the date fills half of the text, the numbers of the year, the month and the day were apparently given in words, not in figures. The king's name is distinctly Kanishka.
In the third line the only legible words are Totāye patimă after which probably patistäpitä is to be supplied. The meaning of the words may be either that an image was set up by Tošā or that an image of Tošā was set up. If Tošāye were taken as the name of the donutrix, the object of the donation would here simply be called patimă. However, this would be quite unusual. In no other inscription of this timel pratima alone is used in this way, No. 68, where the second line ends with Jinadāsiye pratima, being apparently incomplete. Everywhere the name of the pornon represented by the statue is added to pratimā, sometimes compounded with it (Nos. 13, 28, 29, 37, 50, 51, 118, 121, perhaps also 72), but oftener in the genitive case (Nos. 18, 24, 26, 34, 43, 45, 454, 47, 694, 71, 110 ; in 74 bhagavato Varddhamānapratimā). Generally the name in the genitive precedes pratimā; a different position of the words occurs only in No. 39 (dānam pra
In later times pratimd alone oooure occasionally, e.g. in the Mathura insoription of G. 113 edited by Bühler, Ep. Ind., Vol. II, p. 210, No. 39.
