Studies in Pyu Epigraphy II. Pyu Inscriptions on Molded Tablets: A Way Forward?

The Pyu language is known from some 150 inscriptions, a few of them long and most of them short. Almost none can be reliably dated, but paleographical and archeological evidence suggests that the earliest dates from the first half of the first millennium CE. Decipherment of the Pyu language has, thus far, been based mostly on bilingual or multilingual inscriptions. Such inscriptions are few, so further progress will have to be based on monolingual ones. This paper examines a set of short Pyu monolingual inscriptions found mostly on molded tablets. Molded tablets (also called votive tablets) inscribed in known languages such as Pali, Old Mon, and Old Burmese display a relatively narrow range of content, and we would expect comparable content to be reflected in the Pyu examples.