Dear Ashok,

On page 56 of my booklet (with the original akṣaras reproduced from a Śāradā manuscript) you can check this possibility for yourself, the difference being that a halfcircle below the mātrā is open to the left (rta) or closed (rbha). This applies of course to actual handwriting only, but not to the abstracted shapes of Śāradā akṣaras, which is why I did not categorize such forms under the heading of "Semi-homographe Akṣaras" (pp. 43 ff), where you therefore might have looked in vain.

2) > Srikanth Kaul' himself does not specify that he has emended the text the way he has because "rbha" could be a miscopying of "rta".

I have quoted Kaul's editorial note verbatim, and he writes indeed:
" (mislec[tion] for Śār. rtā)". Kaul considered rbha a Śāradā mislection for an original -rta and emended his text accordingly.

3) > Sriivara describes an unceremonious funeral, one in which a body brought in a coffin and covered with a single sheet is simply dumped into a space that exists in/on the ground, although it is the body of a royal person

Actually, Śrīvara here solemnly describes a royal funeral in accordance with Muslim rites. This is the context of the stanza quoted by me:

Ḥasan, Sulṭān Zayn's grandson and heir to his deceased father, buries his father Sulṭān Ḥaydar Šāh (who unfortunately died of excessive alcoholism).

Regrettably, vocabulary and modes of expression of the largely ignored post-Kalhaṇian Rājataraṅgiṇīs are nowhere recorded in our standard dictionaries.

4) > In such a context, "bhuu-garta" conveying the idea of a 'ditch' or 'trench' seems more appropriate than "bhuu-garbha" (which would connote greater depth).

From the actual context as given above a different picture emerges. The new Sulṭān would hardly have dumped his father into a ditch, for he was publicly buried at the royal cemetery in Śrīnagar.

Śrīvara was a poet and expressed himself as such a one. That he had indeed a "womb of the earth" in mind when composing his stanza can be seen from a telling parallel, where he depicts Zayn's burial as an eyewitness, at the occasion of which he had been present as well:

yatra suptā ivaikatra bhānti pūrve mahībhujaḥ |

bhartṛpremṇā dharaṇy eva nihitā hṛdayāntare || Zayna-T. 1.7.227 ||

"There, [where] the Earth had taken them inside for love of her [royal] husbands, the previous Sulṭāns appeared to be asleep [together] in the same place."

That is the way a cremation-accustomed Hindu poet conceived of the strange impression interments left on his mind, when the earth, who is supposed to have always only one husband (ruler) at a time, takes them all together inside herself (hṛdayāntare = bhu-garbhe), where they now seem to sleep comfortably side by side.

I am sorry that I had not clarified the full context in my earlier mail and so unintentionally caused some confusion. I just wanted to be brief in pointing out the theoretical possibility that -rbha might have been misread for -rta, and that an early mislection of that sort may have easily survived in copies made from such an exemplar.