Po Dam slab (C. 246), 631 Śaka EpiDoc Encoding ArloGriffiths intellectual authorship of edition Arlo Griffiths DHARMA Jakarta DHARMA_INSCIC00246

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 DHARMAbase

The lettering is characteristic of the eighth century CE.

The project DHARMA has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 809994).

Public URIs with the prefix bib to point to a Zotero Group Library named ERC-DHARMA whose data are open to the public.

Internal URIs using the part prefix to point to person elements in the DHARMA_idListMembers_v01.xml file.

 encoded the inscription
svasti kṣoṇī-bahni-rasāṅkite śaka-varṣārāmāśrite . trige phālguṇyasya site sa śukradivase 'tha
-varṣārāmāśrite This reading is unmetrical and very uncertain also for other reasons. The second akṣara looks more like rtha or rthā; the first would seem to bear a repha or vowel marker (ā or ī).

When the Śaka year had reached a halt (ārāma?) in (1) earth, (3) fires, (6) flavors, in the waxing fortnight of Phalguṇa, on the third, a Friday.

The inscription seems to form one almost complete stanza in the Anuṣṭubh meter, the last syllable being entirely lost or never written. It comprises only or almost exlusively a dating formula, of which I so far understand only the chronogam (kṣoṇi-bahni-rasa ‘earth-fires-flavors’ = 1-3-6, so 631 Śaka) and the indication of the month and fortnight (phālguṇyasya site ‘in the waxing fortnight of Phālguṇa’). Presumably trige indicates the quanitième as ‘third’, in which case we land on Thursday, February 6, 710 CE, one day off from the indication śukradivase (Thursday) in the text.