Indian Epigraphy c17.12

c17.12

Similar was the motive behind the forgery of the Rummindei pillar inscription³ of Aśoka. About the beginning of the year 1928, Birendranath Ray of Purī, a well-known collector of antiquities and founder of the now-defunct Ray’s Museum, was reported to have discovered a stone tablet (19" × 12" × 7") bearing writing in Aśokan Brāhmī. It was said that Ray secured the inscription from a cultivator of Kapileśvara, about a mile to the south of the Liṅgarāja temple at Bhubaneswar, and that the stone had been fixed into the mud wall of the latter’s house for generations. Haranchandra Chakladar of the University of Calcutta deciphered the writing and delivered a lecture on its identity with the Rummindei pillar inscription at a meeting of the Orissa Historical Association, Purī, on the 2nd Jyāiṣṭha, 1335 B. S., and its report appeared in the *Forward* of Calcutta. Since many of the edicts of Aśoka have been found in several versions scattered in different parts of his empire,