43
ation. The word at the end of the previous line may be the equivalent of the modern แจ้, meaning 'dwarf' 'squat,' 'creeping'. In default of any better suggestion I have taken it so, and render it 'cowering'. RS inserts the sign of repetition, ๆ, which may possibly have been the missing character. But it hardly seems likely that such a clever clerical device should have been in use when writing was so new; and a repetition of the last syllable of the balanced phrase spoils the rhythm, which the Siamese never forgets. I leave the gap therefore as I find it.
The 7th word of this line is read by all the editors as บุก. The plain reading of the stone is เนก. The vowel is positively เ, and not ◌ุ. Tho only doubt about the consonant is as to whether a certain small break in the stone has obliterated the loop of a น, or whether there never was any loop there, and the letter was บ. In either case, to read บุก requires an alteration of the text which the scholar should be loth to make, but which has found favor only because of the obvious sense it gives—'J'ai percé la foule'. But the text gives good sense as it stands. All the other elephants that figure in in this writing appear under their proper names. It would be strange indeed if the hero's elephant alone, in the hero's only recorded exploit, were left nameless. Neka Phon—shortened as Dr. Frankfurter suggests from Aneka Phon, (a host of troops)—would seem a very suitable name for a war elephant, and such I take it to be.
The sort of treatment this text has suffered throughout at the hands of editors is well shown in this single line. Of the ง inserted at the head of the line, which has no other raison d'être than that for a quarter of a century it has served to conceal an editor's inability to do anything else with it than to fill an empty space, I have already spoken. Through mere carelessness it would seem, since no conceivable end is gained, S writes ท (or is it บา?) for บ่ (2nd word), and ม for น (7th word), neither change according with his own transliteration; and he omits four of the seven still legible accents of the line. P on the other hand, with deliberation, but with equal clumsiness, attempts by mere pen-stroke to make over เ into ◌ุ (7th word), with a result which resembles nothing whatever in Prince Ram Khămhæng's alphabet. In future I shall spare myself and
