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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA Captain Lang of the Kâṭhiâvâḍ Political Agency.[1] A critical essay on that edition was published in 1841 by Prof. Lassen in Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vol. IV. p. 146 ff. ; and Prinsep’s translation was subsequently reprinted, with part of a revised translation by Prof. H. H. Wilson,[2] in Mr. Thomas’s edition of Prinsep’s Essays on Indian Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 57 ff. A month after the appearance of Prinsep’s edition fresh facsimiles of the original were taken by Lieut. Postans, but they reached Calcutta only when Prinsep, at whose instance they were made, had already left India ;[3] and in July 1842 another facsimile, the joint labour of Captain (afterwards General Sir) George LeGrand Jacob, Mr. N. L. Westergaard and a young Brâhmaṇ, was presented to the Bombay Asiatic Society, and a small lithograph of it published in the Society’s Journal, Vol. I. p. 148. A great advance in the reading and interpretation of the inscription was made in 1862, when in the same Journal, Vol. VII. p. 118 ff., Dr. Bhau Daji again published the text and a translation of it, with a large lithograph reduced from facsimiles made by Bhagvanlal Indraji. Moreover, a revised version of Dr. Bhau Daji’s work, by Prof. Eggeling, appeared in 1876, in Archæol, Surv. of West. India, Vol. II. p. 128 ff., with a collotype from estampages by Dr. Burgess. Two years later Dr. Bhagvanlal Indraji’s own text and translation were published, under the editorship of Prof. Bühler, in Ind. Ant. Vol. VII. p. 257 ff. And finally,[4] in 1890, Prof. Bühler again gave the text and a translation of part of it, in his essay Die Indischen Inschriften und das Alter de Indischen Kunstpoesie, pp. 45 ff. and 86 ff. ─ Some four or five years ago Dr. Fleet most generously presented to me his excellent paper impression of the inscription and requested me to re-edit this record. In now, at last, complying with his request, I would gratefully acknowledge my obligations to the labours of my predecessors. Though from the first I saw that I could add but little to the main results of their wok, I have persevered in my task because I felt that, even in its more minute details, the text of this, our earliest Sanskṛit inscription of importance, ought to be given in as reliable a form as possible A careful study of the impression enables me to add that the accompanying photo-lithograph, made under Dr. Fleet’s own supervision, apparently is the first facsimile of this inscription that has been prepared by purely mechanical processes.
The inscription is on the western side, near top, of the famous rock which also contains
the Aśôka edicts[5] as well as a long inscription of the Gupta king Skandagupta,[6] about a mile to
the eastward of the town of Junâgaḍh in Kâthiâvâḍ, and at the commencement of the gorge
that leads to the valley which lies round the mountain Girnâr.[7] It contains twenty lines of
varying length[8] of well-engraved writing which covers a space of a about 11′ 1″ broad by 5′ 5″
high. Of these, only the four last lines (17-20) are fully preserved, while in each of the lines
1-16, as will be seen from the facsimile, a more or less extensive part of the writing is entirely
gone, through willful damage or the peeling off of the surface of the rock. Taking the total
length of the twenty lines to be about 1900″, the missing portion of the writing would be about
275″, or approximately one-seventh of the whole inscription. Where the surface of the rock has
[1] See Jour. Bo. As. Vol. II. p. 27, and Vol. III. Part XIII. p. 27.
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