Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/155

Rh has been accidentally omitted. The second satâ connected with vivâsâ must be the Sanskrit sattva, meaning 'person.' Thus we get the renderings:—

Sahsrâm—'And this proclamation [was made] by the body of missioners; to wit, two hundred and fifty-six, 256 missioners.'

Rûpnâth—'By the body of missioners the proclamation was made; to wit, 256 persons [were] missioners.'

Brahmagiri—'And this proclamation was proclaimed by the body of missioners; [to wit], 256 [persons].'

Vyûtha (vivutha) in the first clause is a collective noun. The meaning of the second clause at Rûpnâth is clear and determines the interpretation of the other texts. It is impossible to discuss the problem further in this place. The interpretation now offered recurs to that of Senart, who long ago translated vyâtha by 'missionaries' (i. 188).

The interpretation of Edict II is easy, and my earlier version stands. The style differs from that of all the other inscriptions, and it seems plain that the document was composed in the secretariat of the Viceroy of the South at Suvarṇagiri. Probably that town ('Golden Hill') was somewhere near the gold mines in the Nizam's territory.

The new version of Edict I discovered in 1915 at Maski in the Râiehûr District of the Nizam's Dominion is close to ancient gold workings. The much mutilated text of that document is interesting chiefly because it begins with the words, Devanaṁpizpiyasa Asokasa. No other inscription gives the emperor's personal name Asoka. The text nearly agrees with Rûpnâth and Sahasrâm, but is too much damaged to admit of continuous translation. Edited with plates in Hyderabad Archaeological Series, No. 1, Calcutta, 1915.

The addition of the scribe's signature at the end of the Mysore texts is curious, and it is specially remarkable that he wrote the last word 'scribe' (lipikarena) in the Kharoshṭhî character of the North-Western frontier. IIc seems to have been a northerner. The town of Isila must have been at or