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Art. XV.—A new fragment of the Thirteenth Edict of Piyadasi at Girnar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

My learned colleague and friend, Professor Rhys Davids, in the course of his recent travels in India, found at Junagadh two fragments that had broken away from the Girnar Rock. One was in the museum; the other was lying on the floor by the rock, and has now been removed to the museum. They belong to the Thirteenth Edict of Piyadasi. It will be remembered, in fact, that only a part of this tablet was found in situ. I am all the more obliged to him for the friendly confidence with which he asked me to present them to our colleagues of the Royal Asiatic Society, because, unless I am mistaken, the study of them will enable us to introduce important corrections into the reading or interpretation of several passages.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1900

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References

page 337 note 1 I do not know why Bühler (Epig. Ind., ii, 471, note) seemed so adverse to admitting a material error on the part of the graver. As the phrase stands at Shahbaz Garhi, it is halting, abrupt, and hardly explainable. I can only adhere to my first conviction (“Inscriptions de Piyadasi,” i, 297).

page 339 note 1 The signification of nijhatti, nijhapeti, appears to me firmly established, not only by the comparison of Delhi iv, 17, 18; viii, 8 (compare my notes), but by the literary use, as in Milinda-pañha, Trenckner's edition, 210, 1; 8. These words could in fact be translated fairly exactly by ‘conversion, to convert.’

page 339 note 2 An allusion to the anusayạ of the commencement (anusaya, anutāpa, avatrapā are practically equivalents), to the regret which the outrages of which Kalinga had been the scene had caused the King, a regret which is put forward as the starting-point of the edict and the cause of his own conversion.