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कहाऊँ स्तम्भ एवं क्षेत्रीय पुरातत्व की खोज ८५ and it was accordingly interpreted as qualifying the noun Skanda Gupta, which was also in the genitive case. The visargs, however, does not occur in the facsimile published by Prinsep, and therefore it should be at once rejected. Had it existed in the original, it should still have been rejected, for śánti is itself a noun, and cannot possibly be used as an adjective for another noun. Mr. Hall was the first to notice this mistake, and he correctly pointed out that the word as used in the text was in the seventh case of a past participle.'' The late Dr. Bhau Dáji did the same a few years after, the former rendering it by being quiescent,” the latter peaceful.”'? Both were, however, mistaken in accepting the word as qualifying the term rájye, as also in the meanings they assigned to it. Mr. Hall subsequently rejected his first version, and accepted the word to mean "being exitinct," but he still insisted on applying it to rájyė, and the result therefore continued as unsatisfactory as before. The word stands just before varshe, and by the ordinary rule of Sanskrit construction it should be interpreted along with that which is proximate to it, and not taken over to rájye, which is removed from it by the intervention of several other words in a different case. Doubtless the exigencies of metre often lead to the reversion of the natural order or connexion of words in a sentence, but where both a distant and a near connexion are possible, the most appropriate course is to adopt that which is most natural, unless the context shows this to be inadmissible. This is the course which Sanskrit exegesists usually follow, and I see no reason to depart from it in explaining the stanza under notice. In it the words śánte, varshe, trins addas aikottara-ś atatame, jaishthási and prapanne stand in regular succession, and I have no hesitation in taking
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