58
follows it at the end of the phrase: หา ไช่ เปน วัน นั้น ไม่, "it was not that day". Colloquially, however, the negative is often entirely omitted, so that the statement becomes ไช่ เปน วัน นั้น—which is precisely what we have here. The idiom strikingly parallels the French idiom with 'pas' and other words. S has missed it altogether, but P understands it correctly: "Cette lecture . . . ne se fait pas le jour où" etc. It is interesting to note that a writer on this same inscription in the Vajiraññana Magazine, p. 3576, l. 5, has exactly reversed S's mistake, making a positive clause negative. He glosses ll. 108—109 as follows: หา เปน ทาว เปน พระยา แก่ ไท ทั้งหลาย ไม่.
88—89. The ceremony here must have been akin to to the present ถือ น้ำ
89—90. S renders as follows: "Pendant un mois entier, selon la coutume, on fit des fêtes à installer l'éléphant blanc, qui fut nourri par les révoltés; on dora son beau palais. De même pour le taureau appelé Rupa Çri."—a somewhat surprising outcome from the two lines! กระพัด is probably what is now known as สาย สะพัด, the howdah-fastenings. ละยาง is probably provincial for ระยาง the hangings about the elephant's front. To this day central Lao either drops r altogether, or substitutes an l for it.
92. The reader will notice that the text nowhere distinctly says that the four inscriptions so abruptly spoken of here were engraved on the 'stone slabs' mentioned in l. 82. Yet unless we connect the writing with the slabs, there seems to be not the slightest reason for saying anything about either. But absolutely convincing on this point seem to be the words in l. 96: ขดาร หิน นี้—which can mean nothing else than the very stone and the very inscription we are now studying. No suspicion, however of any such idea crossed B's mind when he wrote "the flat stone called the Manangsila, in the form of an alms-bowl, is placed (as Dagob) above the relics, to close the foundation formed by the stone." The last clause is, of course, mere nonsense. Schmitt for a moment had a glimpse of the truth, and wrote: ' Cette pierre ci (la pierre de cette inscription même), nous appelons Manga (sic) -sila". But later, when he came to edit P, he renounced it all; for he had committed himself to the theory that there was but one stone, and it was "un trône
