Notes on the New Aśoka Inscription from KandaharAuthor(s): Shaul ShakedReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 2 (1969), pp.118-122Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25203135 .Accessed: 28/03/2012 19:34

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NOTES ON THE NEW ASOKA INSCRIPTION FROM KANDAHAR

By Siiaul Shaked

Tin: new inscription of A$oka from Kandahar, published by Smile Benveniste and Andre*

Dupont-Sommcr,1 forms, together with the one stemming from Pul-i Darunteh (Lamghan) published by W. B. Henning,2 a special class of A&oka inscriptions. Both these inscriptions are bilingual, but they do not belong to the common type of bilingual documents, in which the text of each language is separately inscribed on a different part of the stone's surface.

Here the two languages are mixed, each short section in one language is followed by one in the other language. The two languages involved, both written in Aramaic characters, are

Aramaic and Middle Indian (Prakrit). Professor Benveniste has identified the new inscription as containing a portion of the

Seventh Pillar Edict of King PriyadarSi; he has shown the Prakrit words of the inscription to occur, and in that order, only in this edict. The Aramaic portions of the inscription, read

and interpreted by Professor Dupont-Sommer, tally nicely with this conception of the

inscription.

The following notes are concerned with some details of the reading and interpretation of the text. The occasion for forming them has been created by Professor E. Y. Kutscher, who is now working on a comprehensive survey of Aramaic. In connection with this work,

Dr. Joseph Naveh was asked to look, as a palaeographer, into the inscription. Dr. Naveh

has made a fresh study of the reading of the inscription from the excellent plates made

available in the original publication, and has proposed a number of readings which consti tute un improvement on the text as given in the Journal Asiatique. I was called upon to comment on Dr. Naveh's new reading, and thus had the opportunity to work out the

remarks which are incorporated in the present communication. To a very large extent I

have relied in the reading of the inscription presented below on Dr. Naveh's work, but on

two or three points I shall be offering my own suggestions of reading. Dr. Naveh has

written, at my request, the following observations in justification of his readings: "The four known Aramaic inscriptions of ASoka, though all engraved in stone, represent

different styles of writing. Whilst the script of the Pul-i Darunteh inscription is formal and those of Kandahar I and Taxila take an intermediary course, the script of Kandahar II is

cursive; it is a careless, somewhat hastily incised, inscription. Therefore we are faced with

several difficulties in the reading, e.g. some forms ofdalet, waw, nun and resh resemble each

other. Although this script exhibits the first steps towards an eastern development of the Aramaic script, it is a straightforward evolution from the standard Aramaic writing of the

Persian period, and most of its traits can be attested in the Egyptian Aramaic inscriptions of the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C.

"Thus Dupont-Sommer's vertical word-divider, which is a straight or somewhat wavy

downstroke, beginning high above the ceiling line, can be better explained as lamed; cf. e.g.

the early 3rd century n.c. papyri and ostraca from Edfu (sec photographs in S. A. Birnbaum, 7he Hebrew scripts, London, 1954-57, Nos. 148-150*). It can be understood that when

1 "Une inscription indo-aramcenne d'Asoka provenant de Kandahar (Afghanistan)", JA, CCLIV, 3-4, 1966, 437-465. This inscription will be referred to as Kand. II.

" 'The Aramaic inscription of Asoka found in Lampaka", BSOAS, XIII, I, 1949, 80-88.

NOTES ON THIi NI:W A$OKA INSCRIPTION FROM KANDAHAR 1 19

incising on stone it was easier to produce a straight stroke than a wavy one, but the straight

lamed occurs even in pen-and-ink writing already c. 375 B.C. in Papyrus Luparensis (CIS, II,

No. 146). Three letters read by Dupont-Sommer as lamed are actually bet. The bet in

Kand. II has lost the formal shape of the head, and the whole letter is drawn without lifting the tool. Such a bet is to be found for instance in Taxila (cf. Dupont-Sommer's script-chart,

Fig. 2 in his article on Kand. il in J A). "In addition to these observations, other readings of the editio princeps of Kand. II have

to be queried. Here is a list of the suggested revised readings: Line 1: lamed after the word shyty. Line 2: fbwC instead of flnt\ Line 3: lamed before and after the word read by Dupont-Sommer knn\

Line 4: the word read by Dupont-Sommer wyhwtlwn contains no lamed; there is no actual

reason against reading it wyhwtrwn.

Lines 4 & 5: read bptystykn% instead of Iptystykn* (twice). Line 5: lyqyrn instead of gmynr, a careful scrutiny of the script-chart provided in JA will

justify the revised reading. Line 7: the last word begins with lamed, followed by an %ayin\ the third letter is not bet, but

rather a waw, i.e., instead ofKbdyy of Dupont-Sommer, I'wry' would be preferable, but as the

waw resembles the dalet/resh and nun, other possible readings should be taken into

consideration."

The proposed new reading of the inscription is as follows:

1 ](t)y* shyly l(?)[ 2 ](')p zy (bwt* y%nyhyk'ny(S)[ ? 3 sh]yty Vq Ikdn* lwk*y *nwptyp(tmnh shy)[ty] 4 k]n 'p hwtyrn wyhwtrwn bptystykn' 5 sh]yty bptystykn* lyqyrn 6 wyjwmhlk'n 'nwplypty'

? ? ? ? 7 ](0[bs]yrn I'wry'

COMMI-NTARY

Line 1. According to the prevalent pattern in Pul-i Darunteh and Kand. II, the word

or words preceding shyty should be in Prakrit. It should not be too difficult to offer a guess as

to the identity of the words involved in this case, as in the whole corpus of ASoka inscrip tions there are in all no more than some seven occurrences of a combination of words

ending in -//, -tiye, -tiyd, or -tdye followed by ca. One such combination occurs in the

Seventh Pillar Edict, almost immediately preceding the passage from which the whole of

the rest of our inscription is derived. The relevant portion of the text reads: esa hi

dharpmdpaddne dhaipmapafipatti ca "this is the victory of the dharma and the conformity to the dharnur. It seems to me reasonable to suggest that the beginning of line 1 reflects

the end of this group of words and should be complemented: [dhmpfyp](f)yS. There docs

not seem enough space on the stone for giving a double version, Aramaic and Prakrit, for

what follows in the original edict, viz. yd iyarn dayd done sacce socave maddave sddhave ca

lokassa hevam vaddhissati ti. The original edict contains here also the opening formula

120 NOTES ON THE NEW A$OKA INSCRIPTION FROM KANDAHAR

devdnampiye piyadassi lajd hevam dhd. This, too, seems to have been omitted from the

present inscription.

Line 2. The use of the combination 9P ZY calls for comment. It occurs also in Kand. I, line 3: w'p zy znh. These two occurrences are reminiscent of the ideographic use of %PZY in

Sogdian to express '/y. Cf. H. H. Schaeder, ZDMG, XCVI, 1942, pp. 15-19. Schaeder notices that ZY occurs in Sogdian in a number of pronouns and particles, such as (')kyZY

=

Okyty, (')twZY = (*)?wty, etc., from which he concludes that ZY stands for the element -/,

which turns adverbs into conjunctions and adds force to conjunctions and relative pronouns.

The combination %PZY presents a problem in Schaeder's view, as %P could symbolize by itself the conjunction Uy. "Wenn nun fur 'ty, yrty die Verbindung %p-zy geschrieben wird",

he argues (op. cit., p. 18), "so bedeutet dies, dass 'p fiir den Begriff'und* steht,... wahrend

zy gcwissermassen als 'phonetisches Komplement' dient und das gesprochene -/ besonders

zum Ausdruck bringt..." The Kandahar inscriptions suggest that the sequence '/> zy was

used in the Aramaic of the Eastern regions to express the conjunction, perhaps with some added emphasis, and the Sogdian ideogram 'PZYcan thus be regarded as a straight take-over

from Aramaic. Schaeder's hypothesis could now be reversed, and it may be suggested that

the use of ZY to express -t(y) in Sogdian combinations is by generalization from 'PZY (for which we also have in Sogdian the shorter variant ZY) for *ty, frty.

The word (bwt\ recognized here by Naveh, can correspond, among other conceivable

possibilities, to Sanskrit sddhutd, sddhutva, Prakrit sddhu "good**, or the like. In the present context, the concept does in fact occur in the Prakrit version of the Seventh Pillar Edict both before the phrase ydni hi kdnici and after it. The sequence sddhave ca in the sentence quoted above could well be rendered by the Aramaic %p zy fbwt\ On the other hand, fbwt* could also have a collective, rather than an abstract, meaning, something like "good deeds, good

behaviour", and thus could equally well be taken to correspond to sddhavdni kafdni in the

phrase ydnl hi kdnici mamiyd sddhavdni kafdni "whatever meritorious deeds I have done".

In view of what will be pointed out later, viz., that the Aramaic version seems regularly to

precede the Prakrit text and not to follow it, the second possibility offered here is to be

preferred. One could conceivably complement the beginning of line 2 somewhat as follows:

[mh zy *bdt]. Line 3. The reading IkdrC is adopted with great reservation. The form kdn\ attested in

Imperial Aramaic, contrasts nevertheless with the form zy which occurs in our inscription.

The two words *rq Ikdn' should correspond to the Prakrit loke anuppafipamne "the world (i.e. people) conform"; one wonders whether Ikdn* can have the force of an adverbial expression such as "according to this manner". The first word of the Prakrit sequence loke anuppafi

pamne, not recognized by the original editors, seems nevertheless to be transcribed in line 3 under the unexpected spelling Iwk'y. If the identification of this word is correct, we have here an early use of ViW/t as a mater lectionis which stands for a front vowel. 'Ayin is written before yod or without it in some cases in Punic inscriptions for the transcription of Greek or Roman words,3 and its use as a vowel is regularly attested in the Mandaic script4 as well

* Though it is not used there to designate a front vowel; cf. J. Friedrich, Phonizisch-punische Grammatik,

Rome, 1951. p. 42 f., ?107. 4T. Nttldeke, Mandaische Grammatik, Halle, 1875, 69 f.; R. Macuch, Handbook of Classical and Modern

Mandaic, Berlin, 1965, p. 13, ?8.

NOTES ON THE NEW A$OKA INSCRIPTION FROM KANDAHAR 121

as in the Manichaean script of Middle Persian, Parthian, and Sogdian (in Manichaean not in a middle position).6 This development is also supported to some extent from the spelling of certain Aramaic words in the corrupt ideographic tradition of Pahlavi; cf. e.g. the spellings of YK'YMWM "to stand", VYSH "head", where 'ayin is spelled before a front vowel where there is etymological aleph.* The spelling -ly in this particular case can perhaps be

explained by what one may term a kind of unofficial sandhi, affecting the pronunciation of a

final -e before a word beginning with a-, although to my knowledge this phenomenon is not otherwise attested in Prakrit, perhaps because it is not given expression in the Indian script.

Line 5. The new reading fits in well with the syntactical function of the words; the bet of bptystykn* renders well the instrumental case of the corresponding Prakrit; and the lamed of lyqyrn is the same preposition as that which follows hwptysty in Kand. I, 6: hwptysty Vmwhy wVbwhy wlmzySty* 'nSn. The word yqyr presents a good Aramaic equivalent to

Prakrit gulu (Skt. guru). The form of the word ptystykn\ with its final element -kn\ presents a difficulty.7 On the face of it, it only resembles the Old Iranian morpheme, -(a)kdna-, so common in Middle Iranian derivatives.8 That suffix does not serve, however, for forming abstracts, which is the form required here.

Line 7. The reading of the last word is vexing. The reading favoured by Naveh, /V./, does not seem to give satisfactory sense; I should therefore like to propose z'wry* "the small

ones", which might correspond, together with (l)[bs]ym, which is the conjecture of Professor

Dupont-Sommer, to the combination kapanavaldkesu. The asyndetic construction of the Aramaic would then reflect presumably the Prakrit compound. The form z'wr- with a waw

is attested in Babylonian Aramaic and in Palmyrene. J. Naveh, however, objects to this

reading; for a zayin the first letter of this word has too high a protrusion above the line. A short word about the structure of the inscription and the function of shyty is still

called for. In the two bilingual Aramaic-Prakrit Asoka inscriptions so far known, there are

altogether three cases where a reasonable conjecture as to the relationship of the Aramaic

and Prakrit passages can be made. These are:

(a) Pul-i Darunteh 5: [lm]hzh dyhhytwy shyty (b) Kand. II 2: [. . .](')p zy fbwC y*nyhyk$ny(S) 7 (c) Kand. II 3: [sh]yty 'rq Ikdrt lwk*y *nwpfyp(tmnh shy)[ty]

All three passages have to depend to some extent on textual restitution and guesswork as

to their interpretation. They all, however, nicely support the assumption of the sequence

Aramaic?Prakrit equivalent being the normal one. In example (a) the restitution [lm]hzh was done by Henning, and it is a very plausible one. In example (b), as was shown above, it

is at least possible to take fbwP as corresponding to the following Prakrit text. Example

4 In Manichacan Middle Persian, examples for the use of 'ayin as a front vowel in initial position arc

numerous; cf. *y (- i?&fat), *yn, 'yst'dn. \spwr. In the middle of the word it is often used as a line-filler with yod or for distinguishing words of similar appearance; cf. W. B. Henning, Ztsch. f. Indologie it.

Iranistik, IX, 1933, 180. For a similar usage in Manichaean Parthian cf. A. Ghilain, Essai sur la langue par the, Louvain, 1939, 41. On Sogdian cf. I. Gershevitch, A grammar of Manichaean Sogdian, Oxford,

1954, p. 3, ?18-22. W. B. Henning, Handbuch der Orientalistik, 1,4: Iranistik, 1, Linguistik, Leiden-Kttln, 1958, 36, points out

the irregularities in the use oi'ayin, although it appears particularly commonly before front vowels. 7 Cf. Benveniste, op. cit., 449 f. C. Salemann, Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, I, 1, 280.

122 NOTES ON THE NEW A$OKA INSCRIPTION FROM KANDAHAR

(c) contains a fairly clear correspondence *rq?lwk\\\ where the same sequence is maintained. In these two inscriptions there is no example which would go against this assumption.

The Aramaic text is thus seen to be followed by its Prakrit equivalent without any inter

vening mark. The word shyly comes either before or after the sequence, and cannot therefore have the sense of "c'est-a-dire" attributed to it by Professor Benveniste.9 A slight indication as to whether shyty precedes the Aramaic-Prakrit sequence or follows it can be found in Pul-i Darunteh, line 7. With shyty, the proper text of the inscription seems to come to an end here. After it comes only the sentence, given in Aramaic alone: Symw Imktb b'mlwd'].

. .

"Set ye to write on pillar(s)", or "(These injunctions] were set to writing on pillar(s). . ."

It seems therefore that shyty does not serve to introduce a passage, but rather to conclude a

portion of text delivered first in Aramaic and then in Prakrit.10

Op. cit., 452. 10 Professor Sir Harold Bailey adds the following suggestion (in a letter): "At the end of glosses in Khotan

Saka and TumSuq Saka one finds Khot. livinda 'it is said, it means*, and TumSuq hvanidi, both passive. Would the shyty be here Iranian 'sohyatai *It is said*?'*