Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s2.t1.2

c8.s2.t1.2

EHS texts are typically more or less Sanskritic in orthography but Prakritic in morphology and syntax. Thus a typical EHS word occurring frequently in the inscriptions is *bhikṣusya* ‘of (the) monk’, corresponding to Sanskrit *bhikṣoḥ* and MIA *bhikkhus(s)a*. Here the stem is spelled as in Sanskrit, while the inflection is a pseudo-Sanskrit rendition of the Middle Indic *-ssa*. Similarly, the standard EHS dating formula is *etāye pūrvāye* or variants thereof, equivalent to Sanskrit *etasyāṃ pūrvāyām* ‘on the aforementioned [date (*tithau*)]’.