The Purana Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age c7.3

c7.3

i. First may be cited an instance from the Vṣ, because it affords the best illustration of a misreading that seems significant, though the Vṣ does not contain the oldest version. It calls Aśoka generally Aśokavardhana, but kVṣ has Ayośokavardhana (p. 28, note 28). Here *yo* is obviously a misreading of *śo*; the copyist read the *śo* as *yo* and wrote *yo*, then he (or some one else) perceived the mistake and wrote or inserted *śo* in the copy, but the *yo* was not cancelled and the erroneous name Ayośoka remained and was repeated till it appears in kVṣ. Now *śo* could not be mistakenly read as *yo* in any Indian script except Kharoṣṭhī, and in that *śo* and *yo* were often written so much alike, that it is very difficult at times to say merely from the shape which letter was meant. Hence it seems reasonably certain that this passage in the Viṣṇu must have been originally taken from a Kharoṣṭhī MS. Had this mistake occurred in verse, the extra syllable would probably have been detected and the error corrected, but there was no such check in the prose of the Vṣ, and the mistake might have been followed in one copy (from which was descended kVṣ) though rectified in others.