Indian Epigraphy from Kara-tepe in Old Termez: Problems of Decipherment and Interpretation.

• Author: Salomon, Richard

The Buddhist cave monastery site of Kara-tepe at Old Termez in southern Uzbekistan, together with the closely adjoining site of Fayaz-tepe, provides one of the most important sources of information on the spread of Buddhism during the Kusana period. Kara-tepe was first recognized and investigated in the late 1920s and has been sporadically studied since then, most importantly in systematic excavations under the direction of B. J. Staviskij since 1961, which have produced five volumes of reports published between 1964 and 1982. Most of the epigraphic materials in Indian languages and scripts that are treated in the present book were previously published in those volumes by Vertogradova herself, as well as by T. V. Grek and J. Harmatta, and in other publications by various other scholars, most notably by M. I. Vorob'eva-Desjatovskaja.(1) Building on the foundation of this earlier work by herself and others, and in many places supplementing and improving on it, Vertogradova now presents the most complete, up-to-date, and authoritative collection of this interesting body of texts. Moreover, her book also includes some materials that were previously unpublished, including several of the particularly interesting bi- and triscript inscriptions discussed on pp. 106-13.

According to the author (p. 5), more than 150 inscriptions in Indian scripts (Kharosthi and Brahmi) and languages (Prakrit and Sanskrit or hybrid Sanskrit) were found at Kara-tepe, as well as 35 at Fayaz-tepe. However, the present volume actually presents only 109 inscriptions from Kara-tepe. The discrepancy is not explicitly accounted for, but presumably most of the remaining 40 or so Kara-tepe inscriptions are too fragmentary or illegible to be productively treated. The total of 150 or more may also refer to recently discovered inscriptions not yet published here; see, for example, p. 141, n. 48, referring to a trilingual inscription to be published in the next volume of the Kara-tepe series. The Fayaz-tepe materials are treated in an appendix (pp. 123-32) in which improvements are suggested for Vorob'eva-Desjatovskaja's reading of seventeen inscriptions.

The majority of the inscriptions from both sites are written in ink on pottery. These inscriptions, according to Vertogradova's analysis (pp. 11-14), comprise two main types: donative records, almost always written in Kharosthi script, and possession records marking the inscribed vessels as the property of a particular monk, mostly written in Brahmi. The latter category also includes five biscript (Brahmi and Kharosthi or Brahmi and Bactrian) and one triscript (Brahmi, Kharosthi, and Bactrian) inscription. Donative inscriptions on pottery are well attested in inscriptions from various parts of (traditional) India and Afghanistan (pp. 8-9), especially from the Gandhara region. Inscriptions marking ownership are less common, but some examples have been recognized, notably at Salihundam in Andhra Pradesh.(2) In the present collection we have some specimens of complete inscriptions, which have been in the past quite rare, as most of the previously published examples were only fragments, often very small, of the full records. Thus both the abundance of new materials from Kara-tepe and their relatively good condition make them a particularly important source for the study of Buddhist institutions of the Kusana era.

The Kara-tepe excavations also yielded a few graffiti in Kharosthi and Brahmi from the walls of the monastery cells, located in conjunction with paintings on Buddhist subjects. Vertogradova concludes (pp. 36-37) that they generally contain didactic or...