National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

NOTE ON THE INSCRIPTION ON THE SILK-STRIP No. 34:65.

By Prof. Dr. STEN KONOW, Oslo.

The small silk-strip 34:65, which is 26.5 cm. long, bears, in the right hand cor-
ner, a short inscription, 5.75 cm. long and consisting of ten signs. They have
been written with ink, and in the case of the first letter the ink has run out
into the silk so that the head has become indistinct. There cannot, however, be any
doubt about the reading. The preservation of the legend is remarkably good.

The alphabet is Indian Kharoṣṭhi, which we know from numerous documents
found at the ancient sites along the southern route through Chinese Turkistan,
where it seams to have been in current use during the first centuries of our era, so
far as we can judge at present down to the latter half of the third century A.D. La-
ter on it was replaced by the other ancient Indian alphabet, the Brāhmī, which had
been introduced into the northern oases in the second century A. D., and of which
there are also traces in the south even in the Kharoṣṭhi period.

We have not sufficient materials for judging, with certainty, about the gradual
changes of individual characters during the period when this alphabet was in cur-
rent use in the southern oases. Most of the documents have only been published in
transliteration, and the table of letters prepared by the late Professor Rapson¹ is
useless for chronological purposes. We must therefore turn to dated Indian Kharoṣ-
ṭhi records in order to arrive at an approximate dating.

It has long been recognized that the closest parallel to the Central Asian Kharoṣ-
ṭhi is to be found in an inscription found at Wardak, about thirty miles to the west
of Kabul, and now preserved in the British Museum.²

With regard to our record the similarity is very striking. We may compare the
rounded top of the letter ca, which is angular in most Central Asian records; the
straight top and the two long legs of ya, while the right hand leg in Central Asia is
usually shorter than the other one; the modified form of sa, which it has become
usual to transliterate ṣa, and which, in India, is met with for the first time in the
Wardak inscription, and, above all, the form of the cerebral ṭa. In Central Asian re-