Silver vase of the deity at Dieng, early 10th c. CE EpiDoc encoding Arlo Griffiths intellectual authorship of edition Arlo Griffiths DHARMA Jakarta DHARMA_INSIDENK00388

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Characters typical of the early 10th c. CE.

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 encoding of the inscription

gavayan· bhaṭāra I ḍihyaṁ dyun pirak· brat· kā 4 rambutnya lpas·

ḍihyaṁ The correct reading of the toponym is found only in 657.

Work belonging to the deity bhaṭāra of Dieng: silver vase weighing 4 kāṭi. Its hairs are separate.

It is reported in 657, that the artefact (registered under acc. no. 5824) is an urn found positioned over a statue of a four-armed standing deity (acc. no. 5823), and that the artefact was hit by a spade at the time of discovery, damaging its lower part, which is indeed lost in the available photographs. The report clarifies that it is the neck of the vase on which we find the inscription engraved.

The collocation gavayan bhaṭāra is found also in Kakavin Rāmāyaṇa 8.54: i samīpaniṅ kanaka-kalpataru, hana maṇḍapādbuta ya ratnamaya, patiganya markata-maṇik makiris, gavayan bhaṭāra ya isinya kabeh Beside the golden wishing-trees, there was an amazing hall, made of jewels; its floor was of smooth emerald, and all its contents were the work of deities (translation ). It seems likely that gavayan bhaṭāra in our context expresses possession rather than manufacture by the deity.

Perhaps the deity referred to in the text is the one represented in the statue, but this is a matter of speculation. Since the possessive suffix -nya cannot refer to the deity, it is assumed here to refer back to the work (gavayan). As for rambut, various interpretations have been proposed, the most thorough discussion being that of Stutterheim (). Since the word rinambutan seems to mean furnished with feathers in Kakavin Rāmāyaṇa 7.15b ndan rinambutan əmās panahnira and has put golden feathers on his shaft (translation Robson, with comment 187), and since this same passage reveals that figurative rambut could be made of precious metal, we imagine that the gavayan bhaṭāra was furnished with detachable fringes designated as hairs or served as container for the detachable hairs of a statue. See also the expression rambutnya Udi in the Salingsingan II charter (1r2).

Essentially the same decipherment was published by F. D K. Bosch on three occasions, the first (3342) and the second () both marred by some typographical errors. The edition of reference is the third, that was included further in 6575824. Re-edited here by Arlo Griffiths from photographs, revealing a part of the inscribed part of the artefact to have been lost since it was read by Bosch.

Pages 334 (§2), 657 (no. 5824) 105 228-230 47-483 50