South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

NOTE ON THE BAJAUR INSCRIPTION OF MENANDROS

Majumdar’s edition is characterised by those qualities we were accustomed to find in his work, careful observation and good judgment. The inscription is however not easy, and I do not think that all his results can be accepted. I therefore drafted some notes when the edition reached me and sent them to the New Indian Antiquary. I do not know whether they have been published,1 and at all events I should certainly have made some changes in the proofs. I have therefore thought that it might be of use to rewrite my paper.

The inscription is found on a steatite casket, which comes from Shinkot in Bajaur, about 20 miles to the north-west of the confluence of the Panjkora and Swāt rivers. The casket is well preserved, but the lid is broken, only two pieces, about half of the whole, having been recovered.

The casket was said to have encased a casket of silver, which in its turn contained a gold reliquary and some ashes. No traces of these have, however, been found, and I do not think that the whole statement can be trusted. It may be a reflex of what has been told about other relic caskets. There was a gold casket within the Bimarān2 vase, and the Taxila steatite vessel where the silver scroll inscription3 of the year 134 was found contained a silver vase, enclosing a gold casket, containing some minute relics.

We cannot, therefore, be confident about the existence of the silver casket, the gold reliquary and the ashes. The only thing we actually know is that there is a well-preserved steatite vessel with a broken lid.

As rightly pointed out by the editor, there are several records incised on the casket, and I shall retain his designations of them. A is found along the rim of the broken lid, and is incomplete ; A 1, likewise incomplete, is incised in the centre of the lid, and A 2, also incomplete, on the inside of the lid. After A 1 we have a fourth incomplete record, C. Inside the casket are the records B and D and outside, on the bottom, E.

Of these epigraphs only A, A 1 and A 2 can be assigned to the time of Menandros, while the remaining ones can hardly be older than the 1st century B. C.

A is incised in bold and well executed letters of an early type, as shown especially be the closed head of the akshara sa. The reading is perfectly certain Menedrasa Maharajasa kaṭiasa divasa 4411/4 praṇasameda ‘of the Maharaja Menandros, the 14th day of the month Kārttika, accompanied with life’. There is a short interval between each word. We may note the form Menedra, for which Majumdar read Minadra, though the e of the second syllable is absolutely certain. It is the same change which is represented by the Pāli form Milinda and is no doubt due to an Indian notion that the name was a compound with indra. The way of expressing the figure 14 is unusual. It would seem that the engraver had first written 4411, and then corrected it, adding a 4 below the second 4.

It is hardly likely that Menedrasa was the first word of the inscription. We should certainly expect that the year would be mentioned before the Mahārāja’s name, as Majumdar thinks. But the fragment of the lid which must have contained this has not been recovered. The year was most probably a regnal year.

After the date follows the word praṇasameda and then the great break sets in. Praṇasameda would be Sanskrit prāṇasamēta, and may mean, as Majumdar states, ‘ endowed with life’. It should be noted that intervocalic there appears as d, while we shall find t in A 1.

The word occurs in A 2 on the inside of the lid, which only contains two words praṇasameda and Śakamunisa, but about half of the lid is missing between these two words. There has clearly been comparatively long intervals between the words of this inscription. That between Śakamunisa

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^[1] [Since published in the New Ind. Ant, Vol. II, 1939-40, pp. 639 ff.─Ed.]
^[2]C. I. I., Vol. II. pt. I, p. 50.
^[3]C. I. I., Vol. II, pt. I, p. 70.