Page:JSS 006 1b Bradley OldestKnownWritingInSiamese.pdf/4

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author of the two preceding studies. It is in fact another edition of them, revised and altered somewhat, and with the text now in photographic reproduction. But for the scholar, the value of this text is very seriously diminished by the fact that it has everywhere been retouched, and that too, it would seem, without reference to the original, but to some inaccurate transcript—apparently the one twice published before. Similar changes of the text appear, and nearly all the lacunæ are written in so as to appear as text. Transliteration and translation are, of course, no more authentic than the text on which they are based—if it be not rather sometimes the case that the interpretation has determined the text.)

————— วจิรญาณ (Vajirañana Magazine, Vol. VI. pp. 3574—3577. Bangkok 1898. A short article embodying in a freely modernized version nearly the whole of the fourth face of the inscription, including the dates, the story of the origination of Siamese writing, and the boundaries of the realm.)

————— เรื่อง เมือง สุโขไท (Bangkok 1908. A pamphlet of 22 pages, prepared and printed for H. R. H. the Crown Prince, containing two inscriptions from Sŭkhothăi and one from Khămphæng Phĕt. The first of these, the one with which we are here concerned, is the text in modern Siamese characters and spelling, with occasional substitution of modern words. Here also there is no indication of what portions are conjectural. But upon the whole, I find it the least inaccurate text so far produced.)