Re: Inscription Kuru

If the particular inscription has been correctly identified by Lance
(i.e., can Nina affirm this?) the Pali could be "handily" translated
by the members of this list --if someone has A.P. Kent's 1990 edition,
and can type the text into an email.  If this isn't the correct minor
rock edict, or if Nina has some cause for doubt, I would just mention
that sometime non-Ashokan inscriptions that are in "Brahmi" script
(NB: the latter is a problematic category/term to begin with) might be
mis-represented as "an Ashokan inscription".  In other words, if this
doesn't match any of the minor rock edicts covered in the standard
texts (as Nina was suggesting earlier) ... it may not be Ashoka's
Brahmi.

Museums and tour guides are prone to this type of error by way of
embellishment; I recently heard a very vivid description of "Hindu
human sacrifices" at Champassak --i.e., a description from a tour
guide that was not based on any historical fact.

I, too, have no skill/luck at recording stone inscriptions with
photography --and creating a "rubbing" is illegal in most
circumstances.

In case Nina doesn't already have an English translation of the
Ashokan edicts, I believe the following includes all of the "minor
rock edicts":

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html

The strange offer I made of "transcribing Ashokan into Ashokan..." is
partly explained by the software here:

http://www.xenotypetech.com/osxBrahmi.html

Photographs and rubbings tend to be of such poor quality (in print)
that there have been many arguments as to what a particular line is
supposed to be --sometimes difficult to resolve without reference to
the original stone.

E.M.