A middle Indo-Aryan inscription from China

Whaley, Mark (2009) A middle Indo-Aryan inscription from China. Acta Orientalia, 62 (4). pp. 413-460. ISSN 0001-6446

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Abstract

The work comprises a presentation of a decipherment of an inscription on ancient lead objects found in China’s Wei River Valley, and the Han dynastic histories that preserve their memory. To reach his decipherment the author provides a substantial assembly of lexical material — much of it heretofore unpublished and absent from dictionaries — including Indo-European, Sanskrit, Indo-Aryan, and Chinese languages. Augmenting the philological material is a meaningful observation of Brāhmī forms and Chinese graphs also missing from standard works. The author observes the implications of his decipherment for the study of the interaction between Indian and Chinese cultures in antiquity, as well as for the history of the early proselytisation of the Buddhist faith and philosophy outside of India. All of it results in a contribution that should be of serious interest to Indologists and Sinologists alike.

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