Vol. Ill, No. 1.] The Maurya Inscri/ption at Sarnath. 3 



r 



injunction had been inscribed for their benefit at a certain place 

 (—a Head Quarters Office or Circuit House of the District may be 

 meant by the word tamsalanasi — see beloAv). And they are ordered 

 to have a similar writing inscribed for the benefit of the laity. 

 This inscription must have been placed within the boundaries of 

 the monastery at Samath ; for the District Officers and laity are 

 told to come on every Uposatha day and look at it. A reason 

 appears for these repeated visits to the inscription : to see the 

 edict of the King is to have one's faith in it confirmed, visvamsa- 



yitave. 



The last paragraph contains a formula to which reference has 

 already been made as found at Rupnath (Biihler I, A., Vol. 

 XXII), aud which reads as the usual ending of a Government 

 r Order, dem.anding attention in set phrase to the very letter of the 

 edict. The word which I translate ' strongholds ' is not found in 

 the Rupnath inscription. If this word can mean the garrisons of 

 a district or province, and if these were not under the direct con- 

 trol of the mahamatas as civil officers, we can understand why 

 the latter should be told " to cause the edict to be made known " 

 in places beyond their jurisdiction. 



NOTES ON THE TEXT. 



Line 3. — Mr. Vogel reads ye-hena-pi^ by joining together the 



fragments ^ c and i d (see facsimile in E. I.) in what he has no 



- doubt was their original position. I cannot even after handling 



• the fragments persuade myself that they belong together ; nor 



can I locate the aksaras ye Ice, The thii^d aksara may be i^ead 



no. * 



Line 4. — Mr. Vogel reads hhikhati ^ and anavasasi. I read 



hhnhhiiti ( = Skr. bhanksyati) which accords with bhetave of 1 ,1, 



and is confirmed by the aksaras in L 4. of the Sanchi edict, I also 



read a^avasast^ which is clearly the word in 1. 5 at Sanchi. Cf. 



Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XVII, p. 388, for the technical sense 



of this word as a place which is fonnally declared to be not-a- 



residence. 



Lines 6, 7. — NikJiita^ nikhipatha^ samscdanasi hang together. 



The two verbal forms I understand in the technical sense, which 

 the Vacaspatya assigns to the word mA;5ej5a = silpihaste samska- 

 rartharii dravyaderarpane ca. At any rate, before a lipi or in- 

 scription can be placed on a site, it must be passed through the 

 engraver's hands to be inscribed. Samsalanasi^ in grammatical 

 relation with nikhita, should denote a concrete thing or place; and 

 I have taken it as = Skr. saiiisarana. Some of the meanings of this 

 '• word in the dictionary are ; — highway ; resting place outside the 

 gates of a city ; meeting or junction (samgati^samgama). In Pali 



i Mr. Vogel in a letter to me accepts my reading and interpretation of 



'hhdJchati, He is kind enongb to explain that the proof-copy of text and 

 translation, which I had set up daring last winter, arrived too late for notice 

 in his official contribution to the Epigraphia Indica. 



