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246
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[Vol. XXIV.
It may be recalled that the Isāpur yüpa record also ends similarly, May the fires be pleased '. We may therefore confidently conclude that our record did not run into any lower line over a facet which has been destroyed.
The general arrangement of the record and the purport of the lines preserved make it further certain that the present first line was preceded by two earlier ones, which referred to the first two sacrifices in the Sapta-Soma-samstha. This point will be further explained later.
The portion of the inscription that has been inscribed on the completely preserved facet of the pillar and also over a small fraction of the facet on its left, makes it clear that each facet was intended to have one quartrain of the Anushțubh metre. It is thus clear that at least the metrical part of the record was inscribed over the four out of the eight facets of the yūpa. The same probably was the arrangement in the case of the last five lines, which are in prose.
The characters of the inscription, which has been engraved very carefully and beautifully, belong to about the 2nd century of the Christian era. The form of the letters na, na, la, and sa makes it quite clear that the record is much earlier than the Gupta period. It would be instructive to compare its characters with those of the Isāpur, Nändsă and Badvā yūpas, erected respectively in the 24th year of emperor Vāsishka, and 282nd and 295th year of the Krita, i.e., Vikrama era. Unlike in any of the above dated records, in our epigraph, the forms of the medial short and long i are denoted by one and two curvilinear lines respectively, placed over the top of the letter; the later practice of using for this purpose curves turning to the left and right, which we see in Isāpur, Nändsă and Badvā records, is not known to our epigraph. The central stroke of sa is still slanting downwards; this is an archaic characteristic and is not to be seen in any of the above records. Na and ma have only a slight bend in the base line; the former has not yet developed a hook, and the latter shows no tendency to develop any curve at the top. The central bar of ka is still a straight line; it has not become curved as at Nändsă and Badvă. The vertical of la has not yet developed a curve at the top as at Badvă. Ya shows no loop in the left limb as at Nānds, and Badvă. The letter da still retains its archaic form and opens to the left as in the inscriptions of Ushavadāta and Rudradāman. Palæography would therefore show that this yüpa inscription is earlier than the yüpa records, referred to above; we may, therefore, with fair certainty, place it in the first part of the 2nd century A.D., if not even a little earlier.
The language of the record is Sanskrit, but there are the following mistakes in it. Chchh in uchchhritah or samuchchhritah has been throughout represented by chh ; see 11. 1, 2, 7. In 1.7 Ovim te has been wrongly spelt as 'vimśē. In 1. 10 dātvēva is probably a mistake for dattv-aiva. At the end of the 1. 13, there is a sandhi mistake ; instead of tasminnrev=āhani the record reads tasmirnēv-āhani. The last five lines of the record are in prose, but its first 11 lines are in verse, the metre being Anushtubh. The same probably was the case with the first two lines of the record that have now been lost.
Orthography calls for a few remarks only. An anusvāra is indicated by a dot above the letter; it is not changed to the nasal of the class of the letter following ; see 11. 6,8. Va has been changed into ba in the word Kaubidārikā, 1. 12.1 Consonants are not doubled when they are conjoined with a preceding r; cf. chaturthah, 1.2, or-bhokta vyam, 1. 15. The rules of sandhi are usually observed : dbhih charakaio (1. 15) is the only exception. There are no punctuation marks at the end of sentences or verses. At the end of J. 15, there is a small horizontal stroke which was perhaps intended to be a punctuation mark. The verses are numbered at the end. There is a separate numbering for the verses in sections A and B of the record.
[See p. 249, n. 3 below.-Ed.]
