382 On some Bactro-BuddJiisi Relics from Rawal Pindi. [No. 2, 



the verb ; it is distinctly vihayati ; vi prefix tl the conjugational termi- 

 nation, and liaya the root. In Wilson's Dictionary, this root is said 

 to have four meanings "to move," "to worship," " to sound," " to he 

 weary," hut none of them seems to be appropriate. " To move" 

 might he used in the sense of "to pass away." But a Buddhist 

 would not in a hurry say of his saint that "he passed away." The 

 more probable reading therefore appears to be viliarati, a genuine 

 Buddhist term for " taking pleasure" or " relaxation." To do this, 

 however, the ya must be assumed to be a miscript for ra. But whe- 

 ther so assumed or not, the word must be taken as a metaphorical 

 expression for death. 



My reading of the entire inscription according to the above ana- 

 lyses would be fsiT^ vj?i^ imiisrr^ TTffr^T??^ ^fwfw ^tw T*r- 

 ^r*§1 ^ff^^jT^ fVf x;ftT || and its translation : " In the first watch of 

 the night, Bhagavan Bodhaboprajiia or Bodhabopravva, the joyous, 

 for the sake of prosperity, drinking of joy, and rising above his flock, 

 took his relaxation." 



One objection to this reading of the text, though not a serious 

 one, is its style which is much more artistic and high flown than 

 would he suited to a Bactro-Buddhist epitaph ; hut if the value as- 

 signed to the several letters composing it be admitted, the meaning 

 cannot well be avoided. The only Arian records of any length that 

 have yet been translated are the As'oka edicts of Kapur-di-giri and the 

 Vase inscription from Wardak, and they are both, in nearly pure 

 Pali. If they differ, the difference is due to their bearing a closer 

 resemblance to the Sanskrit than to the Pali, and not to any deteri- 

 oration from the Pali. Following the former, they retain the three 

 sibilants and compound consonants with r, which are nowhere met 

 with in the latter. The Arian legends on the bilingual Bactrian coins 

 are likweise in Pali, and they fully justify the assumption that in the 

 time of the Indo -Bactrian sovereigns the language of court and religion 

 was the Pali, and since the inscription under notice is unmistakeably 

 a Bactrian sepulchral record its language must be the same ; which 

 being conceded, the meaning I have given to it follows as a matter 

 of course. I have found that it is possible by a segregation and 

 rearrangement of the different syllables— the words being engraved 

 continuously in the original and not separated — to form new words 

 with different meanings, but as they could not be held together by 

 any grammatical cement, I have not thought proper to advert to them 



