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| 0435 |
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 |
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study of all epigraphical finds in Kharoshthi. The painstaking
researches concerning them which he has carried on for the
past year with scholarly zeal and acumen are not likely to be
concluded for a long time. But they have advanced sufficiently
to make it possible for me, with his permission, to indicate in
broad outlines certain main results and some of the more curious
details.
It is a source of gratification to me that the conclusions I first
arrived at regarding the language and general character of these
documents have been fully confirmed by Mr. Rapson's labours.
From his exact analysis of a considerable number of Kharoshthi
documents on wood and leather, it can now be asserted with
certainty that the language is an early Indian Prakrit, possessing a
large admixture of Sanskrit terms. The latter are particularly
prevalent in the introductory and other formal parts of the letters
and reports, that is, exactly where the epistolary custom of modern
Indian vernaculars has large recourse to phrases of the classical
language. As regards the great mass of the documents there can
be no doubt that they contain, as surmised by me from the first,
official correspondence of various kinds. Reports and orders to
local officials on matters of administration and police, complaints,
summonses, safe-conducts, and similar communications seem to
constitute the bulk of the documents. Others, again, may prove
to be records of payments or requisitions, agreements, bonds, and
the like. Accounts, lists of labourers, &c., are probably the con-
tents of the mass of miscellaneous "papers" written on single
tablets of irregular shapes and usually in columns ending with
numerical signs.
Exceptionally great as are the difficulties with which the work of
detailed decipherment has to contend, on account of the very
cursive character of the Kharoshthi script and the puzzling
phonetic peculiarities of the Prakrit dialect employed, we already
obtain many interesting glimpses from the passages which can be
definitely interpreted. The titles given to the ruler in whose name
orders are issued, and with reference to whose reign the more
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