No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
In the Indian Antiquary for December, 1893 (vol. xxii), on pp. 343–5, in a paper entitled “Notes on Antiquities in Rāmaññadesa (the Talaing country of Burma)” there is a discussion by Major (now Sir) R. C. Temple on two inscriptions figured on plates ix and ixa of the series illustrating the paper. These plates represent two glazed terra-cotta tiles found in Lower Burma, each one bearing in rather high relief two female figures elaborately robed and adorned with bracelets, necklets, ear-rings, pagodaspire-shaped head-coverings, etc. The attitudes of the figures differ slightly in the two plates. Above them, in each case, is an inscription in the native character which Sir R. C. Temple has read kwan phrau mā, pa mat Iwat, with the alternative suggestion of phra instead of phrau. He has tried to make sense of this legend in Talaing, Burmese, and Shan, with a further hint that it may possibly be Siamese. As a Talaing inscription he interprets it to mean something which, as being “against epigraphic experience”, he is “loth to accept”, namely, a vague reference to a “wife who is a friend for ever”, a statement which in fact has no particular point. In the other alternative languages he makes it out to be a formal dedication (lwat) of the tiles by a nobleman with a Siamese title and a Pāli name, one kwan phra Mahāpamat to wit. At the same time he adds the caution that the legend does not appear to be correct Siamese.
page 692 note 1 I must express my thanks to the Curator of the Exeter Museum for his kindness in supplying me with plasticine casts of the inscriptions on these tiles and causing the latter to be photographed for me; and to the owner of the tiles for permission to publish such of the photographs as I might select for purposes of illustration. The accompanying plate shows the four inscribed tiles in this collection.
page 693 note 1 They are all (roughly) 1½ feet in length and 1 foot in breadth.
page 694 note 1 On the face of it, I should have been disposed to interpret this legend to mean “Māra's daughters in the new form of two children”. But they are represented on the tile as women, not children. Perhaps we may say “girls” instead of “children” here. The word tmi no doubt refers to their transformed shape.
page 697 note 1 The British Museum and the Indian Section (South Kensington) each have two tiles with animal-headed figures. The former also has one with a demon carrying a club.
page 697 note 2 See the plate illustrating the four Exeter tiles: Nos. 2 and 4 represent the Indo-Chinese type, Nos. 1 and 3 the other one.