1898.] Animal Address. 55 



With the discovery of Kapilavastu, it will now be possible also to 

 identify definitely Kusinagara, the place where Buddha died. It is pro- 

 bable that it will be found to the eastward, either just within or just 

 without the frontier-line dividing British and Nepalese territory. 

 To discover this celebrated spot must be the next object of archaeolo- 

 gical research. 



Archaeology and Epigraphy. — I will now proceed to give you 

 some account of our progress in Indian archaeology and epigraphy. 



The eailiest specimen of Indian writing known to us is that which 

 is found ill the celebrated Ayoka inscriptions. A9oka reigned in the 

 latter half of the third century B.C. His capital was at Pataliputra, the 

 •modern Patna, but he ruled over an empire which probably had the 

 ^widest extension ever attained by any under a native Indian ruler. 

 This is shown by the wide distribution of the edicts which he caused 

 to be engraved on rocks and pillars throughout his dominions, and in 

 which he promulgated his regulations for ordering the moral and reli- 

 gious welfare of his subjects. These edicts have been found as far 

 east as Dhauli in Orissa, as far west as Shahbazgarhi beyond the 

 Indus, and as far south as Siddapur in Mysore. The northern ex- 

 . tension of A9oka's empire is shown by the recent discovery (in 1895) 

 of a pillar inscription of his in Nigliva, within the Nepalese frontiers. 

 The Mysore edicts, too, are a recent discovery, having been found by 

 Mr. Lewis Rice in 1892 near the village of Siddapur, in the Chitaldrug 

 district in the Mysore State. One of these A9oka edicts forms a con- 

 nected series of fourteen paragraphs. It occurs in a nearly identical 

 version engraved on large rocks or boulders at six different places, among 

 them at Girnar in Juuagarh, at Mansehra near Abbottabad, and at 

 Shahbazgarhi. At these three places, the three last paragraphs of the 

 edict had long been missing ; but quite recently, they have been recovered, 

 either wholly or in part. One was discovered by Major H. A. Deane, 

 in 1887, another by a subordinate ofiicer of the Archaeological Depart- 

 ment in 1889, and the third by Kae Bahadur Gopalji S. Desai in 1893.1^ 



Until recently it had been customary to call the script used in 

 these inscriptions the " A9oka characters," because for a long time 

 they had not been observed to occur in any inscriptions but tltose of 

 A9oka. Gradually, however, other inscriptions came to light, exhibit- 

 ing the same characters. They were observed, e.g., on very early coins 

 of Graeco-Indian and other dynasties ; and they also appear on the sculp- 

 tures of the Barhaub stupa which may be seen in one of the galleries 



13 Published bj Ilofrath Prof. Biihler in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. I, p. 16, in 

 the Vienna Oriental Journal, Yol. VIII, p. 318, and in the Journal of the German 

 Oriental Sooietji Vol. XLIV, p. 702. . . . - 



