Demarcation of Asam Panjang (874 CE) EpiDoc Encoding Arlo Griffiths intellectual authorship of edition Arlo Griffiths DHARMA Paris DHARMA_INSIDENKWangkud

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 encoded the inscription

svasti śaka-varṣătīta 786 Āṣāḍha-māsa pañcamĭ kr̥ṣṇa-pakṣa paniruAn vage budha-vāra Uttarāṣāḍha-nakṣatra sobhāgya-yoga

tatkāla pitāmaha I vaṁkud· manusuk sīma I Asapm pañjaṁ vatak pikatan· saṁ pamagat· mavanuA Irikanaṁ kāla manukū Anak vanuA I

sobhāgya- saubhāgya- pamagat· pamgat· Irikanaṁ kāla Irika

Hail! Elapsed Śaka-year 786, month of Āṣāḍha, fifth of the waning fortnight, Paniruan, Wage, Wednesday, lunar mansion Uttarāṣāḍha, conjunction Saubhāgya.

At that time the venerable one pitāmaha of VaṅkudOn the title pitāmaha (attested in several relatively old inscriptions of the Dieng plateau, but not only there), see 214. In the Dieng inscription Ra Kidan I (l. 11), we find a guru hyaṅ i vaṅkud besides (as witness) a pitāmaha i hlaḍan. planted the boundary markers for Asam Panjang, district of Pikatan. The village owning official at that time was Manuku, native of the village .

The Date

The last digit of the year is unreadable. J. C. Eade has informed me (email of 21/09/2011) that the only option for reading the year is with 6 in the place of the units, so 786, although even in this year the nakṣatra on the given date is Uttarabhadrapada, not Uttarāṣāḍha, and the yoga is Atigaṇḍa, not Saubhāgya. Eade explained in his email: A match of 21: Uttarāṣāḍha with 4: Saubhāgya would require the month to be Bhadrapada around 10-11 waxing. And it is a mix up that has to give way to the consistency of the other data. You can, if so minded, expand what these two rogue elements are saying: Uttarāṣāḍha says that the moon is at about 266 degrees and Saubhāgya says that the sun and moon combined total about 40 degrees. This means that the sun component in the sum is about 135 degrees. And if the sun is at about Leo 15 the time of year is somewhere early in Bhadrapada, two months after Āṣāḍha; and then, if the sun-moon distance is 131 degrees, at 12 degrees/day this is about 11 waxing and not 5 waning: so the nakṣatra/yoga combination as given cannot be correct for the time of year. The result of Eade’s conversion of the date is Wednesday June 28, 864 CE.

The Toponym Asam Panjang

It will be noted that the text actually points to Asap Panjang, only the -p of the former element actually being preserved. No place name Asap Panjang — or any other other place name ending in -p Panjang for that matter — is known anywhere, whereas Asam Panjang is attested several times (see 104). It must be noted that this toponym is found misspelt also in other inscriptions (notably asammañja in Panggumulan I 1v13).

Provisionally published by Sukarto Atmodjo (); published again by Arlo Griffiths (). Re-edited here with minor modifications by Arlo Griffiths using the photogrammetry made by Adeline Levivier in March 2023.

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