Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 31

MARCH, 1919)
INSCRIPTIONS ON TWO PATNA BTATUES
27
(4) Cunningham's reading of this letter as va does not eem to be correct. It looks like & vw of the type met with in the inscriptions of the Kshatrapas and the Kushans with triangular lower part. The two sido strokes are not curvish, as stated by Mr. Jayaswal (p. 94), but straight. The longish vertical above is probably superscript t.
(5) No wide difference of opinion is possible with regard to the reading of the last three letters. The na with curved base-line is Kushan in type; but d of di is arohalc. So the inscription may be read
Yakha sa (?) rva tananidi. The figure has the remnant of a chauri (fly-whisk) on its shoulder. Though the reading of the name is doubtful, there can be no doubt that when this short epigraph was engraved the figuro was recognised as the image of an attendant Yaksha.
B Cunningham-Yakhe Achusanigika.
Jayaswal-Bhage Acho chhoni'dhite. (1-2) Cunningham appears to be wrong in reading the first two letters as Yakhe. These two letters were ovidently engraved after scraping off the lines that marked the folds in this part of the scarf and the first two letters were engraved on the clear space. The scraping was then discontinued and the other letters engraved over the lines. Mr. Jayaswal takes the first sign as bha (0). We come across three types of bha in the Mauryan and later inscriptions-don. Mr. Jayaswal writes about the first sign of our inscription "The upward projeotion of the top line as it appears in Asokan bh is not present here. That is a later evolution." (p. 91.) In support of this view Mr. Jaya swal lays down the doctrine of the derivation of the Asokan letter" that tene's to be done in two strokes " from letter" written in three strokes." I place below the sign in question, No. 1, side by side with Asokan and post-Mauriya bhas, Nos. 2-4.
A comparison of No. 1 with Nos. 2-3 makes it self-evident that more strokes are necessary for writing the latter signs than the former. I would like to take No. I as an incomplete bhe. The next letter is a round ga. Angular ga (A) is met with in the inscriptions of the third and, the second centuries B.O., and round ga in later epigraphs. The letters that follow bha (?) ga that are larger in size and engraved over the lines of the scarf appear to be the work of another hand and may not be connected with these two letters. What the engraver intended to incise was probably bhagaid, "the blessed one."
131 The u with space between the arms is not an old form as Mr. Jayaswal asserts but a late form.
(4) It may be chu or cha.
(5) This letter is a chha of the butterfly type met with in Brâhmi inscriptions from the first century B.C. onward.
(6) Mr. Jayaswal is right in taking it as ni.
(7) Cunningham is wrong in taking this sign as g, for an angular ga is out of place in such a late record. But it is not a new form" as Mr. Jayaswal asserts (p. 92), but a tringular v of the Kushan period.
• Memoirs ASi., No. 1.