1862.] On some Bactro- Buddhist Belies from Bdwal Bindi. 181 



made towards an explanation of its meaning, and the te itself is 

 generally written in a very different way. In the Behat Kunanda 

 coins, the jna occurs in the form of an h reversed, while the form of the 

 letter in question is like a double v, =^. If it be taken for the latter it 

 would make the name Boclhabopravva or Boddhatepravva, but with- 

 out making any advance to its meaning : the word, however, being a 

 proper noun, its meaning cannot be of much help, and I despair, there- 

 fore, of coming to the right reading without extraneous aid. The next 

 word is rdtiydmaii, rati for rdtri "night," ydma " a watch," or one 

 fourth of the night, it being usual in India, as elsewhere, to divide the 

 night into four watches. The u is supposed to be doubtful. I take it 

 to be the case-mark for the locative. In the Lalita Vistara it is very 

 largely used to indicate the omission of a case affix, and in the Hindi 

 it is also met with.* The meaning of the whole clause is " in the first 

 watch of the night." 



The second line begins with a word which may be taken for 

 " drinking of joy" or " drunk with joy," from hasisa " laughter" 

 and piu " drinking" or "having drunk." The radicals of both the 

 words are well known, and the only thing doubtful is the si in hasisa, 

 particularly as the next word hasasila "laughing" or "joyous" is 

 written without the si. The next word is iva sasi or "like the 

 moon," from iva "like" and sasi " the moon ;" the letters are distinct 

 and the meaning undoubted. The syllables which follow to the end 

 of the line, are likewise distinct, except the last which looks more like 

 lira than ha. Taking it to be ha, on the authority of the Kapur-di-giri 

 record in which h sometimes occurs with a prolonged tail,f the 

 question arises as to the property of using the word yoha " a flock" 

 or " herd" with reference to men, in Sanskrita the use of its radical 

 yuha being confined exclusively to beasts and birds. But perhaps it 

 would be conceded that for a saint to call his pupils his " flock," 

 or for his pupils, disciples, and congregation to describe themselves 

 as " his flock" even against the genus of the Sanskrita, is not such as 

 to raise any serious obstacle to taking the word in that sense. The mean- 

 ing would be " rising above his flock." The last word of the record is 



* Vide my paper on the Gatha Dialect, ante vol. XXII. p. 608. 



t Since writing the above I have had an opportunity of examining the original 

 gold plate, from which I find that our facsimile is not correct, inasmuch as it 

 shews the tail of the h to be longer than it is in the original, where it is of the 

 same relative size as in ordinary lis, only not quite as curved, the difference pro- 

 ceeding from a desire on the part of the engraver to avoid bringing it into 

 contact with the right foot of the preceding letter. 



