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No. 11) INSCRIPTIONS OF CHANDRAS OF ARAKAN
106 in the bell inscription. Fourthly, the internal evidence of our Inscription No. 1 seems to go against Jobnston's dating if his own views on the date and evidence of the Mrohaung inscription of Anandachandra are taken into consideration. On palaeographical grounds and other considerations, Johnston places Anandachandra's epigraph 'in the first half of the eighth century' and more precisely to a date not much later than A.D. 700'. Now, as will be shown below, our inscription was engraved during the reign of king Nitichandra who ascended the throne, according to the epigraph of Anandachandra, 209 years before the incision of the latter's record. This would place Niticbandra's accession 'not much later than' 491 A.D. As a matter of fact, Johnston's dating of Anandachandra's inscription was influer.ced by his views that the coins of Dēvachandra (who ended his rule 266 years before Anandachandra's accession) and Dharmavijaya (who began to rule 55 years before Anandachandra) should be assigned on palaeographic grounds to the first half of the fifth and seventh centuries respectively. Our Inscription No. 1 as the Vēsāli bell inscription may be actually assigned on palaeographical grounds to the first halt of the sixth century A.D. In our opinion, their characters may have descended from a variety slightly earlier than the Faridpur plates of Dharmāditya and Gopachandra.
We have referred above to an amount of local development in the palaeography of the ingcriptions under study. Ju Inscription No. 1, the letter h is written with a vertical line and a curve opening upwards or towards the right and joining the vertical towards the left not at the latter's bottom but slightly or considerably above it. This form of h is not noticed in East Indian inscriptions, in which the letter has its bottom curved towards the left. A vertical similar to that of his sometimes noticed in ch as well (cf. line 2). Sometimes the form of m (of. mahā° in line 2) appears to be more cursive than noticed in the East Indian records. Inscription No. 2 exhibits the same type of h. Medial à in this inscription is in many cases indicated by a curve opened towards the right and placed at the head of the consonant. The vowel mark in jā in bhūbhujā (line 1) is also of this type, though this form of the letter is not found in Indian epigraphs. In several cases, medial ū sign ends in an inward bend almost making a loop. This resembles medial i as used in some Indian inscriptions as well as in the modern Tamil alphabet. The form of the lettern in svārthēna in line 1 (cf. also rāgena in the same line) exhibits a cursive form more developed than that found in Inscription No. 1. Generally, however, the palaeography of the present record resembles that of the other epigraph and appears to be only a few decades later than that of the latter. This is supported by the internal evidence of Inscription No. 2 which was inoised during the reign of king Virachandra, the successor of Nītichandra of Inscription No. 1 according to Anandachandra's epigraph referred to above although it quotes the name slightly differently. This record may be palaeographically assigned to a date about the last quarter of the sixth century. Nītichandra is stated to have ruled for 55 years and his successor, called Viryachandra in Anandachandra's inscription but Virachandra on his coins, for 3 years only. The palaeography of tho two records appears to suggest that Inscription No. 1 was engraved fairly early in Nitichandra's reign. It is interesting to note that the second epigraph writes Buddha with b while in Eastern India b was generally written by the sign for v from the seventh century A.D.
Inscription No. 3 exhibits the tripartite form of y as in the other two records as well as the same type of h. That, however, it was somewhat later than Inscriptions Nos. 1-2 seems to be suggested by the later danda-like medialā sign and the slightly more developed sign of medial u (of. also medial ů) resembling subscript y and rising to the level of the top mätrā of the consonant to its right. A local development seems to be exhibited by the serif at the top of these signs for medial u and u.
Op. cit., pp. 365 ff.; cf. ARASI, 1925-26, PP. 146-48.
. This form of the sign may be compared with that in certain East Indian records. See, e.g., shka in line 3 of the Batganga inscription (above, Vol. XXX, Plato facing p. 67).
