Indian Antiquary Vol 56

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 27

FEBRUARY, 1927]
A HIMYARITIO INSCRIPTION
A HIMYARITIC INSCRIPTION.
BY OH. MUHAMMAD ISMAIL, M.A., M.F., M.R.A.S. Provenance.---This inscription stone was noticed by me in the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, Bombay, in 1921. I no sooner saw it than I began to trace its provenance. Not being satisfied with the statement, which seemed impossible to me on the very face of it, that it was picked up by Colonel Jacob from the vicinity of the Tombs or Chattris of the former Raos of Cutch, not far from the Resident's office, I wrote to Mr. N. M. Bilimoria, the retired Superintendent of the Cutch Bhuj Residency Office to let me know definitely how the stone along with others came to Bhuj. He replied in a letter, dated 11th December 1923, that they were brought from Aden by Colonel H. F. Jacob of the Indian Army, who was for a long time at Aden and was for some time Political Agent for Cutch, and that under the Colonel's instructions the stone inscriptions were sent to the Prince of Wales Museum in 1911, On further inquiry Mr. Bilimoria confirmed his statement given above. So Mr. (now Dr.) Bhandarkar's suspicions were rightly founded and the provenance of this inscription stone has been determined to be Aden or a place near it in South Arabia.
The Inscription.-1. The language of the Inscription is what may be called Himyaritic, though Sabaean and South Arabic are also names given to it.
This stone measures on the face of it 91' by 9" with a thickness of 13". The left-hand bottom corner has been broken off ; otherwise the epigraph is quite complete and clear. 2. I read it from left to right and find the inscription as below:
Line 1. II K
Line 2. Both the lines are quite legible. Some doubt however is attached to the two strokes II
S
in the first line and the form in the second and perhaps also to T . I shall take them individually.
(a) II. The shape of these two strokes is almost always used as a mark of separation between two words, to mark the beginning of the latter and end of the former between which the mark interposes. The place these two strokes occupy here, i.e., in the beginning of the epigraph, seems to be quite extraordinary. We do not know a letter corresponding to them. If we suppose that their tops were joined the letter will be mein Hebrew-B and the first line could be read then as Bombay, which is as strange as it is unsatisfactory. Again there is no ground for joining the two letters, for the engraver seems to know his art quite well. Then what is the solution! I propose to take each stroke by itself which stands for one. We know that the Himyarites wrote one, two and three in tho form of I, II and III like the Romans and the Assyrians. So I believe that these strokes stand for II - 2- Hebrew
(6) This form of letter is also unknown. We know that Ore = 'a sometimes =,=w=, and that X stands for = = t. Then what does it stand for? I suggest that it is a combination of two letters X placed inside O. The question arises why x was not separately placed? My answer is that "In Muhammadan N nismatics and epigraphy, especially where artistio arrangement is to be observed, clerical accuracy is often sacrificed for the sake of symmetry and ornamentation "3. What is true of Muhammadan Epigraphy is also true of Himyaritio. In the first line two strokes stand for I and I and make two. Here there are two letters, one being inside the other. The skill of calligraphy is to be seen here. If x had been written in the end of the first line there would have been no
1 Archeological Survey Report, Western Cirole, 1916, p. 3. ; Ibid., 1917, p. 60. # JASB., vol. XVIII, p. 37, of the Num. Supplemont.