154 Note on the Tawxila Inscription. [ No. 2, 
patra a car and pati “lord ;” but owing to a lacuna after the last 
word its connexion with the subsequent word is not apparent. 
In the third line General Cunningham has translated the 
words, Sapatika aprativddita “the matchless Teacher ;” but upon 
what authority I cannot make out. Sa in Sanskrita means “hap- 
piness” or “felicity,” and patika “lord,” and the two together 
would make a very appropriate epithet for the founder of Buddhism 
whose great mission was to rid mankind of the threefold pain of 
disease, decrepitude and death, and clear the way to final beatitude. 
The second word is formed of the privative particle @ and prativdda 
“an opposing argument,” with the personal affix itach, which would 
make the whole phrase mean that ‘‘none could oppose him in 
argument.” This is a very becoming predicate for S’akya who has 
been repeatedly described in the Lalita Vistara and elsewhere as the 
most distinguished controversialist, from whom the Brahmanic phi- 
losuphers fled like jackals from a lion. 
About the end of the third line occurs the remarkable word Puyae, 
written often and more correctly with an additional y as puyaye. In 
Sanskrita puyaas a root means “to putrify,” 
and as a noun puya 
indicates “ pus,’ but in neither of these senses can it be used in the 
inscription. Apparently the word is the dative singular of puya, and 
the position it occupies requires it to imply some good or blessing for 
the parties named. Hence it is that General Cunningham takes it to 
be acorruption of punya or “ religious merit” which he translates into 
“benefit.” In the Wardak inscription the word occurs as pus/a but 
that has been attributed to a mislection on my part of the word puya. 
This, however, I am not willing to admit. The cerebral s in the 
Bactrian alphabet is formed of three lines making the three sides of 
a parallelogram leaving the bottom open, the y being formed of two 
lines shaped like a cone. Now inthe Wardak record the last syllable 
of puya or pus’a is made of three lines shaped like a parallelogram, 
and this more than half a dozen times. General Cunningham, being 
well aware of it, says that “there they are formed with a rounded 
head instead of the usual pointed one.” It must follow, therefore, that 
if the word there be puya and not pus'a, the error is due to the 
engraver of the original record, and not to the decipherer; and 
if an error of the kind be admitted, it is just as possible that it 
should be in the Taxila as in the Wardak monument, the only circum- 
