Let there be fortune! Hail to the people! Elapsed Śaka era 674 ... mid-day.

The gift of arable land that he gives for the sake of dharma, out of devotion for Īśa Śiva; that promotes prosperity, being praised by the Triple Assembly trigoṣṭhyā and accepted by its Siddhadevī: the village Hampran, for which the arrangement of the outer boundary markers is known from an ordinance in the form of a stone inscription grāva-lekha at Kośāmra i.e., at Poh — may it and the life of the fame of this one called Bhānu be eternal here on earth!

(untranslateable)

Poerbatjaraka interpreted trigoṣṭhyā as equivalent to the toponym Salatiga for a modern city not far from the site of the inscription. Alternatively, could this be an allusion to the three high officials Paṅkur, Tavān and Tirip known from numerous inscriptions?

Since De Casparis and Poerbatjaraka did not recognize the word grāva-lekha, they failed to see that the text is talking about an inscription. I tentatively presume that Kośāmra is a place name, and if this is correct it is likely a Sanskritisation of a Javanese toponym with a word for mango (kośāmra designates mangifera sylvatica in Sanskrit), i.e., very likely the common toponym Poh. Cf. 743; the identifications on the modern map for epigraphic toponym Poh proposed by Kusen (202) do not seem particularly convincing, and anyhow such a common element in the landscape as a mango-tree is likely to have been used as toponym in more than one area of ancient Java. Alternatively, it might denote (the shape of) the engraved stone itself, in which case one would have to translate in the form of an inscription on the kośāmra stone.

yaśojīvitaṁ: I owe the idea of reading a compound here to Dominic Goodall, who points out: perhaps the two things that should thrive forever are rather this [gift of arable land] of his here on earth (tasyaitad kṣetradānaṁ bhuvi) and the life of his fame (yaśojīvitam). I suggest this because it is well-known that nobody lives for ever, but it is a topos that their fame and their foundations may.

This inscription was first edited by J. G. de Casparis (). I inspected the stone in situ on 26 April 2009 and again on 16 August 2011, and revisited the site again on 20 December 2012 to make the estampage that is now kept as n. 2308 at the EFEO in Paris. The inscription is surrounded by a frame engraved into the stone, delimited by a horizontal bar at ca. ⅔ of the height. The part above the bar is further divisible in two due to a deep and presumably old crack in the stone to which a division in the text corresponds. The three horizontal planes are here called A, B and C. Plane C comprises five diagrams (in the shape of squares with flower petals extending from each side) engraved into the stone, the empty space to the right of each one defining five zones here called a, b, c, d, e, with some akṣaras engraved in them. X provides a drawing of this plane C. About De Casparis’ reading of the text it is useful to cite from Damais’ review: On est étonné que la transcription ne présente aucun aksara incertain alors que plusieurs sont d'une forme inusuelle et quelquefois incompréhensible. Malgré les explications données à ce sujet par l’auteur (p. 2-3) et une seule note à propos de la syllabe qu’il transcrit si (siddha dewyāś du 2e vers), la transcription ne donne pas une idée suffisante des difficultés d’interprétation de plusieurs aksara. Le si que nous venons de citer est en particulier tellement aberrant qu’il s'agit en fait non pas d’une lecture, mais d’une restitution.315 The Indonesian scholar Poerbatjaraka has published a reading of his own, and his observations were summarized by Damais as well: L’auteur donne une transcription légèrement différente de certains mots de l’inscription de Hampran, publiée pour la première fois par De Casparis. Il nie par ailleurs le caractère bouddhique que De Casparis attribue à ce document et considère qu’il s’agit d’une inscription śiwaïte, Īśa étant un nom de Śiwa et sans rapport avec le Buddha. Une de ses nouvelles lectures étant Trigaṣṭhi, il y voit un synonyme de Triśālā, qui serait à l’origine de la ville bien connue au Centre de Java, Sålåtigå, à quelques kilomètres de l’endroit où a été trouvée l’inscription en question dont le nom serait une indonésianisation du terme sanskrit. Il termine en discutant la personnalité de Śrī Bhānu. Les nouvelles lectures de certains mots de l’inscription demandant une étude serrée, nous y reviendrons à une autre occasion461 As far as I know, Damais never was able to return to the new readings. The text is re-edited here, with English translation, from the EFEO estampage.

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