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Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
www. kobatirth.org
Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
NOTES
147
not. The point might be partly decided if we could ascertain that Airena was the openin word of the main portion of the text of Khāra vela's inscription.
The first letter of the opening word, as it appears in the plaster-casts and estampages, is the dipthong ai, and we have agreed with Mr. Jayaswal and others in reading the opening word as Airena, and have differed from Mr. R. D. Banerji who proposed to read Kharena, as well as from Sir Alexander Cunningham who read it as Verena. As we have noted, the name of the king of Utkala who defeated king Nanda in a battle was known to the author of the Sanskrit verses, quoted by Mr. Jayaswal from an Old Osiyā MS. of the 14th or 16th ceutury A. D., to be Aira and Ahira. If Airena be at all a correct reading, one must not forget that it is the only instance where a Brāhmi letter representing the dipthong ai is met with in our old Brāhmi inscriptions.
But our faith in the correctness of the above reading bas, to a large extent, been shaken by the consideration of two facts, one brought to our notice by Sir Alexander Cunningham and the other gleaned by us. Sir Alexander has pointed out that Vera in the sense of Vīra (Heroic) occurs as a royal epithet in some of the coin-legends of Ancient India. And we find, in corroboration of the soundness of Cunningham's argument, that the first letter of the opening word of Khāravela's inscription exactly resembles the first letter of a proper name in the two Pablosa inscriptions of Aşādhasena, which the epigraphists have agreed to read as Vaihidari. It is certain that the first letter of Vaihidari could not be read other than as Vai. If the first letter were meant to be read as Ai, we would have found the lettere with one e-sign attached to it instead of a letter resembling e with two e-signs. But for these two e-signs attached to the first letter, the name would have been read as Vehidari. If this be correct, it goes without saying that the Brāhmi letters to represent the dipthongs, ai and au, were unnecessary for incising our old Brāhmi inscriptions. Further, we should remember that there was no occasion for the scribe or scribes of our old Brāhmi inscriptions to make use of the ai or au sign. These signs were, indeed, needed for incising the Barhut E. Gateway inscription of Dhanabhūti and the Pabhosa inscriptions of Āşādhasena, for inscribing such words as pauteņa and Vaihidari.
Apparently the number of consonants represented in the Tattva-Gumphā table seems to have fallen short of the total, forty-one, contemplated in the dictum of the Artha-Sāstra for the orthography of Sanskrit royal
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