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344
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1893.
as the characters and would lead one to suppose, it is apparently translateable.
fo Transliterated it seems to run pretty clearly, thus:- Transnteraceascow
the corHornce Kwaru piran ini, pa mat local... .
its open By exercising considerable license in spelling, and in reading the lettors, sense can be made in Talaing out of all the words, thus : Kón 1 prear ma
p à
tôt...tout moto Son fernale hom. case do 1 hafriends k rever among
wife or daughter
i le SH !! the, Bot in order to get thus far, we have to misspell: kon which should be, transliterated, kaun and not kwan, and to read the akshara Gas G. and the aksharas God as 8o6This last reading, however, would be allowable. The last word can be variously read in Talaing as lút, lamót, lu-ugót, or lawót, according as the first akshara is read as 7 ,92, or -8.53
The meaning of the sentence thus read, which would be good Talaing so far as regards grammar, would be:-“the wife who is a friend for ever." I am very loth to accept auch a reading, as it would be against epigraphio experience. I
n
Marca Assuming the language to be partly Burmese or shati, and partly Siamese, for reasons given below, we get the following result by transliteration : Kuanp'ra i Mahápamáti lwat
in PAI: (the) noble Mahậpamát 1 .dedicated built ont. There is only one difficulty, in this reading, and that is in reading the akshara G, as prá: there being no sign in Burmese or Shân. The aleshara má bn stone is constantly used for maha. The indistinct akshara og in the last word would, if the language is Burmese, be read ut, and if Shfin lòt. Both words mean the same thing, i. e., primarily released, secondarily consecrated,' dedicated,' built in honor of. But whether the language is Burmese or Shan the first two words would be Siamese titles. Kwanp'ra (pron. kunpr) means 'a nobleman,'54 and such people in Siam often have a Pali name or personal title. The Mahậpamàt of the text is a legitimate form for such a name or title, standing for the Pali Mahápamata, either by shortening in the usual way, or in full. Because the akshara may be legitimately read as t, or as + + PAļi suffixed open vowel; 6 or á br for a 'ora. The
Siamese nobles did, we know, frequently visit Ramaññadêsa on pilgrimages and did erect buildings in consequence. This particular man may have done so and order dan inscription to be cut in his honor locally, and the lapidary may have used his own language, which however, at the time that the structures in the neigbourhood were built, 56 was riot likely to have been Burmese, though it might have been Shân.
But the inscription may be purely Siamese. The character is what Taylor, The Alphabet, Vol. II, p. 346 and elsewhere, calls the "Kiousa character of Burma," meaning clearly thereby (p. S45) the Burmese word kyauksd (chauksd, lapidary seript, epigraph). And although he is altogether wrong in his ideas as to its distribution in Burma, he shews that it was in use abont k apd in Siam generally. Such a sentence as that we have before as is, however,
pd Siamese. to be read the word must be read mit. !' *I am much Andebted to the Rev. Dr. Cushing, author of the Shape Diskionary
f indly aid in this difficult text.
* In Siamese the title kan may be prefixed to any other title of nobility, beine...usweit. The tithes are, highest downwarde, Chaup'aya, Playa, P'ra, Luang, Méung and Kun. A "roy" tit persopare prefires Krom bis other titles.
4
Peg - Assuming the neighbourhood whence the tablet came to be that of the Kyaikp an Pagoda (seb'tekt, post, p. 354 f.) the date of the inscription can be only. At present conjectured to be some time after the Siamese conquest of Cambodia in the 13th century A. D. See post, P. 355.
