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12 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

psy88
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Message 9 of 12

16 December 2011 at 11:48pm | IP Logged

Jeffers wrote:

If you get the chance to visit India, Ashoka inscriptions are fascinating. I went to school for 6 years in a school in the Himalayas, then worked there for several years. It was only when I'd been there about 10 years total that I found out there was an Ashoka inscription like 40 miles away. So a friend and I drove there to have a look.

Unlike the Rosetta Stone, I couldn't make out any of the script. But, we were able to touch it with our own hands, which was a moving experience. The information on plaques nearby said that this particular inscription mentioned several Roman emperors by name.

The inscription was carved onto a large rock in the ground, so it wasn't moved to a museum. The British build a building over it to protect it. In their anachronistic way, the shelter is built in an Islamic style. Here's a pic of the building. Here's a picture of the edict inside the building. Since I visited, they've put up a gate.

Thanks for posting the pictures.
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Iversen
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Message 10 of 12

17 December 2011 at 2:56pm | IP Logged

I visited Myanmar in October (as mentioned in my log), and in Mandalay I visited two temples with extremely long inscriptions cut in stone, with each stone slab placed in a little white pagodastyle house of its own: Kuthodaw and Sandamuni. Kuthodaw claims that its text is the longest book in the world, but even without that kind of hype it is an imposing place. And Sandamuni is a worthy competitor.

The book of Kuthodaw was ordered by king Mindon and finished in 1871, and the text is something called the "Tipitaka Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism" (supposedly the complete teachings of Buddha). There are 729 stone slabs plus one more to tell about the project, and the whole thing is written in tiny Burmese letters which I can't read (in spite of having bought a t-shirt with the alphabet). When a printed copy was published in 1900 it consisted of 38 volumes in octavo.

In addition to the two Tipitaka Canon sets in Mandalay I have seen a hint that there is one more in Yangon (but where?), and then there is an incomplete set in Thaton in the Mon district .. but while I looked for links to put in this message I saw a notice that Thaton's missing 200 slabs have been lying scattered around in an area near Mandalay Hill in Mandalay for something like 800 years - so maybe there will soon be 4 complete sets to contemplate (rather than read).

Edited by Iversen on 17 December 2011 at 3:17pm
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Alexander86
Tetraglot
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Message 11 of 12

17 December 2011 at 4:56pm | IP Logged

psy88 wrote:

You said it was small. I always pictured it as large, from the photos I had seen. What were the
dimensions of the stone? Why is it smaller now?

It isn't small per se, but it's not the huge imposing stone I'd expected given all the hype, which is not to say it was
disappointing. It was originally bigger, since it is missing a section of the hieroglyphic text and what would have
originally been above the three texts in the form of decorative masonry. So it was bigger and has come to us
smaller, but I guess I was thinking more about the size of the stone in reference to the knowledge and comment
about the stone i.e. a lot of talk and it's just one piece among hundreds of thousand inside the museum.

But well worth a visit! And thank you for all these wonderful suggestions, hopefully I can get to some of them
someday.
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tangerine
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England
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Studies: Mandarin

Message 12 of 12

26 January 2012 at 6:29pm | IP Logged

For Chinese inscriptions, I recommend:

The 碑林 Musueum in Xi'an, Shaanxi. It has lots of inscriptions going back over 900 years, including a complete copy of the Analects of Conficius. Also, they have staff who do rubbings of the inscriptions using ink, you can buy copies in the shop.

Also, the 孔庙 (confucius temple) in Beijing is pretty cool, it also has inscriptions going back to the Yuan dynasty (13th century). The inscriptions were put there to record the scholars who had successfully passed the imperial examinations and so could work as government officials. It's a tranquil place in the heart of old Beijing and it's nice looking at the inscriptions and think about the sheer length of history, the numerous lives, they represent.

That's my 2 cents' worth.

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