Indian Antiquary Vol 16

Author(s): John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 75

FEBRUARY, 1887.)
GAYA INSCRIPTION OF YAKSHAPALA.
68
in upon us, and any symbols or customs which that the Sun and Moon worshippers, who are common to both continents acquire a value adored these planets because they thought that to us which they had not before. They seem to them they owed the fertility of the earth, to assist us in tracing the rise and growth of were the pioneers of civilization. We may religious feeling, of arts and manufactures, learn a good deal in other ways, too, by studying amongst European peoples of whose history and what has been left us by these prehistoric races; actions we are, and must otherwise remain, as it is evident that they put their whole absolutely ignorant. We are compelled to own energy and knowledge into whatever they that the people of the so-called Bronze Age executed. With even our perfect appliances we were not the Keltic savages which we once can, in some respects, hardly equal, much less imagined them to be ; that the people of the surpass, what they accomplished with the rudest Stone Age were clever in their generation, and of tools.
A GAYA INSCRIPTION OF YAKSHAPALA.
BY PROF. F. KIELHORN, C.I.E.; GOTTINGEN. I edit this inscription, which is now publi- a short stroke which starts from the middle shed for the first time, from a rubbing made of the left side of the following consonant over by General Cunningham to Mr. Fleet. and points slantingly towards the top of the The inscription was discovered by General line, or by a short horizontal line drawn towards Cunningham at the Sati Ghåg at Gaya, the the left which is added below the top line and chief town of the Gaya District in the Bengal above the characteristic portion of the followPresidency. It consists of 21 lines, which ing consonant or group of consonants. In cover a space of 16by 12%; the height of the the rubbing this form of r is most clearly visi. letters is of an inch. The language of the ble in outs: 1. 4, o 1. 5, and a inscription is Sanskrit; and the whole of it, 1. 5; but it can also be recognized in qoof excepting the introductory blessing S 7:1. 1, OAT huofy 1. 6, afireto 1. 16, and strip सर्याय and the concluding phrase लिखिता-1.17. The form of r here deseribed appears [ T]......, is in verse. The verses were
to be the usual one in the Krishna-Dvärika composed (v. 11) by one Murari, of the Temple inscription, in an inscription of SakaÂgigrama family, a Naiyâyika.
Samvat 1059 from the Gaya District, a rubbing The characters of the inscription are
of which has been sent to me by Mr. Fleet, Devanagari; or, to be more particular, a kind and in the Cambridge MS. mentioned above; of Devanagari, which appears to have been and it reminds one of the way in which current in the 12th century A.D. As regards
before another consonant is written in the sculptured writing, the same alphabet bas Sarada alphabet. Besides, I may state that been employed in the Krishna-Dvârika Temple
the group tt exceptionally is written by the inscription of Gaya (Archrol. Suru. Ind.
Ind. sign for tu, in affro 1. 15, and area: 1. 21;
si Vol. III. Plate xxxvii.); while, of MSS. known
and that the group sth, written as one would to me, that one, the writing of which most
expect it to be in feil. 11, is represented by nearly resembles the writing of the inscription under notice, is the Cambridge MS.
the sign for schl in Pril. 4, Tero 1. 11, cart Add. 1693, which was written in A.D. 1165.
1. 13, and fro 1. 14. The consonant b is always (Bendall, Cat. of Buddhist Sanskrit XSS. denoted by the sign for v; and it may perhaps p. 182, and Plate ii. 2, and Table of letters). be mentioned that the signs for tha and vé, as Regarding the vowel-signs, attention may be well as those for ré and initial é, may easily be drawn to the peculiar forms of the medial confounded.-In respect of orthography we i, u, and diphthongs; and as regards the have to notice the use of the dental for the consonants, I would particularly note, that , | palatal sibilant in th: 1. 4, and eagi l. 7, when immediately preceding another conso- and that of the palatal for the dental sibilant in nant, though 25 times written by the ordinary Trofa 1. 9, n r 1. 16, and no l. 18; superscript sign, is several times represented by the employment of the guttural nasal, instead