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926
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
No. 38-HATUN ROCK INSCRIPTION OF PATOLADEVA
(1 Plate)
N. P. CHAKRAVARTI, NEW DELHI Towards the end of May 1941, Sir Aurel Stein sent to Mr. K. N. Dikshit, the then Director General of Archaeology, a photograph of a rock inscription which was received by him from the British Political Agent at Gilgit. In a letter dated the 8th May 1941, Major G.C.L. Crichton, Political Agent, Gilgit, wrote to Sir Aurel Stein at Srinagar as follows: "Captain A. W. Redpath, Assistant Political Agent, Gilgit, when touring in this Agency noticed some writings engraved on a rock near a place called Silpi in Punial. Silpt is just south of the junction of the Ishkoman and Gilgit rivers. Thinking that the writings might be of Archaeological interest, Captain Redpath had them photographed and has suggested sending the prints to you....... As far as Captain Redpath knows, the writings have not previously been photographed or reported to the Archaeological Department. I trust they will be of interest to you".
In his letter of the 17th May 1941, to Major Crichton, Sir Aurel wrote: "It is certainly in Sanskrit and in Brāhml characters of the type known in Kashmir as Sarada. As far as I can judge without being able at present to refer to any palaeographic tables, the writing is not likely to be later than the 8th-9th century A.D. and may be a good deal earlier. The photograph of the left portion of the inscription permits me on hasty examination to read a number of words which make it oertain that it contains & record emanating from a local ruler of some importance, which invests it with interest.
"Being pressed by urgent tasks in different fields and not being an expert epigraphist, I cannot undertake the decipherment and publication of the inscription. For this, the available photographs, especially of the right hand portion, would not suffice. I am sending the photographs to the Director General of Archaeology, suggesting preliminary examination by a competent epigraphical scholar.
“For a full decipherment, & proper paper impression (estampage) will be needed. I believe, such could be conveniently secured with the help of my old surveying assistant, Khan Sahib Afrazgul Khan, who I believe has seen such estampages taken while with me, and whose skilful application to varied tasks has often been appreciated by me.”
As I was at that time at the headquarters of the Department as the Deputy Director General, Mr. Dikshit passed on the photographs to me for examination and report to Sir Aurel. The photograph, particularly that of the right half of the epigraph, was unsatisfactory and the decipherment was made more difficult by the small size of the prints and the several cracks, some of them quite large, appearing on the engraved portion of the rock. I could, however, make out a good part of the inscription and, in my preliminary report, pointed out to Sir Aurel that it contained the name of a Shāhi ruler of Gilgit whose name along with that of another ruler of the same dynasty was also known from the Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts recovered from Gilgit.
In reply Sir Aurel wrote to me on July 12, 1941, from Srinagar : "I was specially pleased to come in your reading upon the title Pațðla-shāhi and in your quotation from the Gilgit Mas. upon the full title Shāhānushāhi known from references to Kushāņa rulers. Ever since I first read that title correctly in the SHAONANO SHAO of the Kushāņa coins I have been interested in Indian renderings of the ancient Iranian title (see my paper on 'Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins' in Indian Antiquary, 1888; also the notes on Shāhi chiefs in my translation of the Rajatarangini).
" The late survival of the full imperial title in a small Hindukush territory is very curious. This makes me particularly wish for any approximate dating you would propose for the inscription on palaeographic grounds. I was unable myself to refer in camp to any copy of Professor Bühler's Indian Palueography on this point,
