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South
Indian Inscriptions |
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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
No. 18.─ TWO INSCRIPTIONS ON BUDDHIST IMAGES
BY T. BLOCH, PH.D.
The first of these two inscriptions comes from Śrâvastî and has already been edited by me
in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LXVIII., 1898, Part I. pp. 274 to 290.
I re-edit it here partly in order to publish a facsimile of it, and partly to correct the statement
made by me (loc. cit. p. 278) in regard to its date. The second inscription comes from Mathurâ
and has recently been edited by Prof. Lüders (Ind. Ant. Vol. XXXIII. p. 39, No. 9) from the
imperfect facsimile published by Growse (ibid. Vol. VI. p. 217, No. 2 and Plate). If I edit it
here again, it is because, having read the inscription from the original during a visit to Lucknow
in October, 1904, and with the help of two paper impressions kindly supplied to me by Dr. Vogel,
I have been able to supply the three proper names mentioned in the inscription, which in Prof.
Lüders’ transcript remained doubtful.[1]The first of these is the most important one. It is
clearly Balasya trepiṭakasya, not [Maha]sya as Prof. Lüders proposed to read. This person
cannot be separated from the trepiṭaka Bala of the Śrâvastî inscription, and of the recently
discovered Sârnâth inscriptions of the third year of Kanishka, of which Dr. Vogel has just
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[1] Two of them have also been read by Dr. Vogel in his article on discoveries at Sârnâth, p. 173 above.
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