Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c11.10

c11.10

An even more remarkable achievement by Wilkins was his translation, published as a letter in AR 1, 279–83, of the record now known as the Nāgārjunī hill cave inscription of the early Maukhari king Anantavarman.⁹ While his comment that the script is “very materially different from that we find in inscriptions of eighteen hundred years ago” is due to his incorrect dating of the Muṅgir plate alluded to earlier, he was nonetheless correct that “the character is undoubtedly the most ancient of any that have hitherto come under my inspection.” (Anantavarman is now known to have ruled sometime in the sixth century a.d.) It is truly remarkable that Wilkins was somehow able to read the late Brāhmī of this period, which, unlike the scripts of three centuries later, is very different from modern scripts both in its general form and in many of its specific characters. It is thus not entirely clear how, beyond pure perseverance and genius, Wilkins managed to read this inscription, but presumably he did this by working back from the script of the Pāla period which he had already mastered.¹⁰ In any case, his translation, while once again not always correct, proves beyond question that he could read the late Brāhmī, or early Siddhamātṛkā, script of the sixth century. We may compare, for example, his translation of the first verse: