Minor Rock Edicts at Erragudi
by
Chandrakant Doshi
Abstract: This
note examines minor rock edicts at Erragudi and shows that the bidirectional
writing in the inscription is not boustrophedon style of writing.
KEY WORDS: Brahmi,
bidirectional, ancient inscriptions, edicts, boustrophedon, Asoka.
Asoka's
edicts are found in many places. At Erragudi, two minor and 14 major rock
edicts are inscribed on 6 boulders. D. C. Sircar1 has published
images of the rock faces as well as the text in his "Asokan Studies".
Not all the inscriptions have survived well and the best readable are the minor
edicts, found on boulder F. This note examines some of the notable features
present in these minor edicts including bidirectional writing and whether that
represents boustrophedon style of writing.
The
inscriptions are all in Brahmi. In the note Roman characters are used to
represent Brahmi using the Kyoto-Harvard transliteration scheme and are printed
in red.
Plate
II in D. C. Sircar's "Asokan Studies" is based on the impressions
taken by N. P. Chakravarti2 and is reproduced here as Image 1.
Image
2 is the upper half of Plate II.
It covers most of the first MRE. Only the last few characters at the end
are missing. It is this image that is used to trace the inscription, showing
the changing direction of writing. It relies totally on Sircar's reading of the
text regarding the direction of writing.
Most
of the text is engraved to be read from left to right with a few lines running
from right to left. In places a segment of text is detached from a line and
located elsewhere. To distinguish these differences, separate colours are used
in the tracing.
Normal
left to right text is in green, right to left in red and the detached segment
in purple. It so happens that the detached segments are all running left to
right. The flow of the text is indicated by the pencil lines, the direction
indicated by the arrows on these lines. All this can be seen in Image 3.
Writing
where alternate lines change direction is known as boustrophedon style of
writing. Characters orient with the changing direction. Same character on two
adjacent lines will appear as mirror image of each other. In the MREs at
Erragudi this does not happen. The characters do not orient themselves to the
changed direction of writing. The inscription in these MREs is not
boustrophedon style of writing in the conventional sense.
In
Image 3a black lines point to same syllable on lines engraved in opposite
directions. Syllables marked out are ha and sa.
An
examination of the image shows that the characters are of varying size. Their
alignment is not regular either. None of the lines runs strictly horizontal.
The first three lines are nearest to being horizontal for majority of their
run. There is certain amount of undulation, dictated, no doubt, by the surface
of the rock.
The
first line of the engraving starts from left and at the end carries on the line
below, from right to left. The scheme of alternating directions breaks down
when the fourth line, starting at right edge, cuts off before reaching the left
edge. Here a segment of six characters (in purple) is engraved on the same
line, starting from left edge and running towards the point where the break
occurred. The reason for this is not obvious. Defects in the rock could not be
the cause as the six characters could easily have carried on to the left edge,
completing the line.
Even
stranger is the positioning of the last character of this detached segment. The
character descends by almost a line height so that it is just above the
character on the continuance line below, which is engraved from left to right.
In this way the last two characters from the detached segment and the first character
of the next line form a staircase, as if to gently guide the reader down to the
point on the next line where to continue reading. These three characters are
pointed to by blue lines in Image 3a.
This
is an amazing feature but it is not repeated elsewhere in the inscription. It
may be that an attempt was started on the next detached segment but then
abandoned. This can be seen in the second 6 character segment in the line below
(in purple). The first two characters are starting to form a staircase but the
third is pulled up and the remaining continue on a more or less horizontal
line. The continuance (in green) is at the left edge of the line below this
segment. Yellow lines in Image 3a point to these three characters.
An
examination of the alignment of the characters shows that very few are
perfectly aligned to the vertical while many characters lean to the left and a
few lean to the right.
Another
peculiarity observed with the MREs is the cursive rendering of the diacritic
for i, which was observed in the Girnar Rock
Edicts, discussed in the Note3 entitled “Artistry at Girnar”. This
means there are two places identified with this particular style of diacritic
for short i. Four such examples in MRE I are
pointed by red lines in Image 2a.
Image
4 is part of the 13th. Erragudi rock edict and shows the state of the rock
face. It is possible, despite the chipped face, to recognise some of the
characters. They appear regular, like those at Jaugada and Dhauli. In this they
represent considerable improvement from the characters engraved in the MREs. In
this image it is not possible to check whether the cursive rendering of
diacritic i is present. A modern digital image
would be a great help.
Image
5 is a trace of the second minor rock edict at the site. Bidirectional writing
and detached segments are identified using the same colour scheme employed in
MRE I. The black arrow marks the start of this edict. Some of the characters in
the first line are truncated. The engraving is fairly regular even though the
lines are not horizontal, particularly at the beginning.
Not many lines are
written from right to left. The detached segments are short, the longest having just two characters. There is no staircase.
The
Erragudi MREs display a few interesting features.
The
characters vary in size and shape. This is particularly true with MRE I.
A
few of the lines are engraved to be read from right to left whereas the normal
direction is from left to right, as observed in MREs at other sites as well as
all the other edicts in Brahmi. These irregular changes of direction do not
make the writing boustrophedon in the conventional sense since the characters
do not alter their orientation.
A
staircase in MRE I, from line 4 to 5 can hardly be accidental but is not
repeated elsewhere in the two MREs.
Lack
of familiarity with the script could explain the inconsistency in the shape and
size of the characters. More than one person could have been involved in the
engraving of these edicts. Haphazard changes in direction is a little difficult
to explain. Perhaps the engravings were not continuously supervised. The
staircase could be an experiment to put matters right. Some of these features
have been smoothed out in MRE II. They appear to be absent from the major rock
edicts at the site.
References
1.
Asokan Studies
by D. C. Sircar, Indian Museum, Calcutta, 1979
2. D. C. Sircar, op
cit, page 2
3. Artistry at
Girnar, 2010
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