IX. The Date of Kanishka

Extract

Since publishing my remarks on the date of Kanishka in this Journal, 1914, pp. 973–86, I have succeeded, by the employment of another chemical process, in cleaning still more effectively the silver scroll bearing the Taxila record of the year 136, and I am now able to present a photographic reproduction of nearly the whole of the inscription (Fig. 1). Some fragments, it will be observed, are missing in this reproduction from the upper and lower edges of the scroll. These fragments were too small and friable to be treated further or to be photographed. Another fault of the illustration is the unevenness of the light and shadow on the surface of the metal. This is due to the curved or twisted condition of the several sections and is unavoidable. In order to obtain this illustration, some of the sections of the scroll had to be photographed from three or four different points of view, and the negatives—to the number of nineteen in all—were then composed together into a single plate. Even so, however, it was not practicable to photograph clearly the lettering at the edges of some of the sections, where the latter were bent sharply inwards, and it is for this reason that I have made another hand copy of the record (Fig. 2), so as to show the form of those akṣaras which are not discernible in the Plate.