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The Aramaic Inscription of Asoka found in Lampāka

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

W. B. Henning
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Extract

Several years before the war a photograph of a stone inscription in Aramaic letters was published in the Persian language periodical Kabul (vol. ii, 1932, p. 413). The following note (in Persian), printed below the photograph, constitutes the whole of our information on the material, history, and provenance of the inscription:ߞ

“A historical inscribed stone: A few years ago a broken stone tablet (lauhe) with ancient Sanskrit writing was procured in the neighbourhood of Pul-i Darunta, Laghmān, and entrusted to Kabul Museum. So far its contents have not been read and understood. The original of the above (depicted) stone is in Kabul Museum.”

Laghmān, older Lamyān (from Lambayān<*Lampakāna), is the name of a district on the left (northern) bank of the Kabul river, a little above Jalalabad; it comprises the valleys of the Lower Alingār and Ališang. This district, whose name is familiar to Sanskritists as Lampāka (also Lambāka), was traditionally regarded as part of the Indian borderlands, the ultima Thule of Jambuduīpa. Cf. Mémoires de Hiouen-thsang, i, 55, “en partant de ce royaume ( = Kāpiśī), il… franchit les montagnes noires, entra dans les frontières de l'lnde du nord, et arriva au royaume de Lan-po”. Cf. also Lampāka in the Yaksa catalogue of the Mahāmāyūrī, and further H. Lüders, SbPAW., 1930, 43, 48, 51, 63. One may presume that the traditional view reflects the conditions prevailing under the Maurya dynasty.

The inscription was made known in Europe by Professor Morgenstierne, who, on finding that the alphabet was Aramaic, asked H. Birkeland to publish it.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 1949 , pp. 79 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1949

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References

page 80 note 1 Suffix -akĀn(a) as in many Iranian place-names. *Lampa or Lamba may have been a tribal name. Cf. also the form used by al-Biruni, or = Lambakā/Lambagā, India, 130, 206 (= transl. i, 259; ii, 9); Qānūn Mas'ūdi, ed. Zeki Validi, p. 46.

page 80 note 2 The hamlet of Darunta itself, however, as M. Raoul Curiel, of the Délégation Archéologique Francaise en Afghanistan, assures me, is on the right bank of the Kabul river. The precise finding-place is apparently unknown.

page 80 note 3 If the inscription under discussion must indeed be ascribed to Asoka, there can be no doubt any longer that Lampāka (and, with it, Nagarāhāra) belonged to his empire. Dr. Tarn assumed that Lampāka had remained in Greek hands since Alexander's time (Greeks in Bactria, 96 sq.), and put the frontier between the Greeks and Candragupta along the Kunār river (ibid., 100).

page 81 note 1 This book has not been accessible to me. However, I have been acquainted with some of his readings through a talk I had with Dr. Rosenthal a year or so before the war. He then very kindly left with me a copy of the photograph that had previously been before Professor Birkeland and himself, and thus enabled me to take an interest in the inscription.

page 81 note 2 The first three paragraphs of this chapter (pp. 25ߝ40) have been reprinted in Festschrift Otto Eissfeldt … dargebracht, Halle, 1947, pp. 29ߝ46, under the title of “Eine neue Aśoka Inschrift”.

page 82 note 1 [Restored], (incomplete) or (uncertain) letters.

page 82 note 2 Birkeland may have been misled by the form of h found in documents of much earlier date (e.g. in the papyrus published by H. Bauer and B. Meissner, Sb.P.A. W., 1936, 414 sqq.).

page 83 note 1 Among them is a novel explanation of the Sogdian letter δ from Aramaic d, contrary to the well-founded opinion unanimously adopted by all those who have occupied themselves with the study of Sogdian.

page 83 note 2 According to Altheim, p. 29, n. 31, Rosenthal threw doubt on the second l (in his book p. 34, n. 1). As the second l is in fact clearly visible, it seems possible that his remarks have been misinterpreted.

page 84 note 1 In fact, four times (as will be shown further on).