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Notes on the Bahapur version of Aśoka's minor rock edict
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
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THE EDITORS OF THE version of Aśoka's first Minor Rock Edict discovered at Bahapur deserve our thanks for making this inscription available so quickly.1 It is unfortunate that by some error the conventional symbols for a doubtful reading [ ], e.g. [sā]tileke in line 2, and a suggested emendation ( ), e.g. (ā)hā for ahā in line 1, have all been printed as [ ], but a careful examination of the photographs of the rock and of the estampage enables most ambiguities arising from this error to be eliminated.
There are several points in the Bahapur version which merit attention, (a) By a faulty word-division the editors have printed amha maye in line 3, presumably understanding amha as an ablative form. It is clear from the other versions of the edict that we must have am here, cf. yam in line 2. If we adopt the word-division am hamaye, we obtain a hitherto unattested form of the instrumental of the first person pronoun. In line 2 of the Calcutta-Bairat2 inscription we find hamā as the equivalent of mamā (= genitive), which is found in lines 13 and 16 of RE3 V at Kalsi, lines 5 and 12 of SepE I and line 6 of SepE II at Dhauli, and line 12 of PE IV at Delhi-Topra; in line 3 of the Calcutta-Bairat inscription we find hamiyāye as the equivalent of mamiyāye (= instrumental), which is found in line 6 of SepE II at Jaugada; we now have hamaye as the equivalent of mamaye (= instrumental), which is found in line 4 of SepE II at Dhauli.
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1971
References
1 Joshi, M. C. and Pande, B. M., “A newly discovered inscription of Aśoka at Bahapur, Delhi”, JRAS, 1967, 3/4, 96–8.Google Scholar
2 I follow the nomenclature and spelling employed by Hultzsch, E., Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, I: Inscriptions of Asoka, Oxford, 1925 (= Hultzsch).Google Scholar
3 Abbreviations: (M)RE = (Minor) Rock Edict; SepE = Separate Edict; PE = Pillar Edict; Ep. Ind. = Epigraphia Indica; IHQ = Indian Historical Quarterly.
4 I follow Hultzsch's division into paragraphs.
5 Quoted by Hultzsch, 48, n. 16.
6 Bloch, J., Les inscriptions a' Asoka, Paris, 1950 (= Bloch), 131, n. 28.Google Scholar
7 e.g. -tvanava for -tveri' eva in line 6, svaga for svage in line 7 (Ep. Ind., XXXVI, 246).
8 Turner, R. L., The Gavīmaṭh and P–lkīguṇḍu inscriptions of Aśoka, Hyderabad Archaeological Series, 10, 1932 (repr. 1952), 15.Google Scholar
9 Hultzsch, facing p. 166. I think I can see a horizontal stroke extending from the right-hand side of the akṣara ḍha. It is level with, but not as thick as, the ā-mātrā in yā two akṣaras later.
10 op. cit., 10.
11 Quoted by Hultzsch, 170, n. 4. Hultzsch himself assumed that saṃta was a mistake for saṃtā or saṃte (p. cxxvi). Bloch accepts the reading saṃtā in his introduction (§ 23, p. 63), but not in his text (p. 147).
12 Ep. lnd., XXXI, 209.
13 Although Hultzsch (p. cv) lists kalaṃtaṃ as singular, it is in agreement with a plural subject and verb, viz. tuphe caghatha.
14 Bloch, 149.
15 IHQ, XIII, 1937, 132, following Sircar's earlier edition in IHQ, VII, 1931 739 (= p. 819), and his own corrected version in IHQ, IX, 1933, 116.
16 Ep. Ind., XXXII, 7.
17 op. cit., 15.
18 See Hultzsch, 1xxiii, and Bloch, introduction, §16 (p. 57).