The Greeks in Bactria and India c28.61

c28.61

An article by M. Govind Pai, *JIH* XIV, 1935, p. 309, only came to my notice after this book was finished. After a minute examination of the writing of the Taxila copperplate inscription (pp. 328–38) he discards the name Moga and for mogasa reads māgasa, ‘of the month Māgha’; he decides that this relates to an intercalation of this month in 77–6 B.C., which makes the Era 155–4; he refers this Era however to the usual imaginary Saca conquest of Bactria (p. 283), which he puts between 162 and 140! I can only notice the strange coincidence with my own dating of the Era; his readings I must leave to Kharoshthi scholars, though I should be astonished to find an inscription in any language dated by ‘the Great King, the Great’ without giving the name. I note the similarity of his view to one once held by Dr Konow with regard to the Taxila silver scroll, *CII* p. 70 no. XXVII; in the Corpus Konow interpreted ayasa as referring to an intercalation of the (named) month Āshādha, but the form ajasa in the Kalawān inscription has led him to abandon this and to agree with Marshall and Rapson that ayasa, like ajasa, is Azes; *JRAS* 1932 pp. 950 *sqq.*, *JIH* 1933 p. 2.