3 - Panegyrical Hymn to Buddha and a record of generous king donation: a study of the longest Pali-donative inscription of the early Pagan

Scwegugyi pagoda inscription is located on the territory of the so-called Schwegugyi temple in Pagan. The whole inscription is written in Pali and engraved on two faces of a massive stone slab. The text was published several times in Burmese. The detailed English translation was published in 1920 by G. Luce and Pe Maung Tin. In the report I’ll present my personal translation of inscription and will highlight some mistakes made by G. Luce and Pe Maung Tin.

The texts represents an information on the generous gift of king Alaungsithu (1112/12-1167) along with long praise of historical Buddha Shakyamuni. According to the text, king’s donation was made in the year of 1141 CE.

Inscription also contains astrological date in Burmese Shaka era written in Sanskrit, not in Pali. The text directly shows variations of the orthography in king’s reign title: some syllables represent linguistic norms of Sanskrit, which means the lack of fixed orthographical standards.

The key point of the report is the outline of paleography. I argue that the shape of letters more or less represent the form of 14-15 century. That means that current text could possibly be a 14-15-th century copy.