Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-dtkg6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-15T23:18:29.503Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Gopālpur Bricks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

Over forty years ago a number of bricks, inscribed with Buddhist sūtras, were discovered in an underground chamber at Gopālpur in the Gorakhpur district of the United Provinces by men ransacking the site for building materials. Four of these came into the possession of Dr. Hoey and Mr. Vincent Smith, who published an account of the find with a transcription of one of the bricks in Proc. ASB., 1896, July, pp. 99–103, but there is reason to believe that a number more remained in the hands of the villagers or were built into an indigo vat by the local zamindar. No further steps were taken for publication of the texts, though references to them have been made occasionally since; and the bricks themselves were lost sight of. On taking over recently at the Indian Institute in Oxford, I noticed in one of the cases of the small Museum attached to it several inscribed bricks, which on examination were found to be the missing ones, Mrs. Hoernle having presented them some fifteen years ago. They were still largely encrusted with mortar, which made the reading of many characters difficult, but Mr. Rickard of the Ashmolean Museum proved equal to removing these deposits and to rendering them as legible as on the day they were inscribed, except for certain fractures. As the contents are of considerable interest to Buddhist scholars, I publish a transcription of the unpublished portion here, and for the benefit of those interested in palæography I adjoin photographs of IIa, IIIb, and IVa; it is not necessary to reproduce them in their entirety, as the writing on all the bricks is of the same kind and the repetitions in the matter are such that the portions not illustrated contain hardly any characters of which typical specimens are not available on the plates.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1938

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 547 note 1 Pargiter, , The Kasia Copper-Plate, A.S.I. Ann. Rep., 19101911, pp. 73 ff.Google Scholar; Ep. Ind., xxi, p. 195; Law, B. C., JRAS., 1937, p. 290Google Scholar.

page 548 note 1 Since writing the above, I have seen in Dr. Le May's collection a terra-cotta plaque, the inscription on the back of which shows precisely the burr to be expected when letters are cut in soft clay.

page 550 note 1 See my translation, Panjab Univ. Or. Publ., No. 32.

page 551 note 1 Read yaṁm.

page 551 note 2 Read °pratyayaṁ ṣaḍāyatanaṁ.

page 552 note 1 Read asati.

page 552 note 2 Read tṛṣṇāyām asatyām.

page 552 note 3 Read asati.

page 553 note 1 Saṁskāranirodhād has been omitted.