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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INTRODUCTION Sanskrit evasakthikā, [1] in Pāli saṁghāṭi- or dussapallatthikā[2] and which, as the name indicates, consists in binding the garment round the knees and hips for support. The ascetic in the relief on. Pl. XLVI 4 is also sitting in the position of saṁghāṭipallatthikā, his right arm, however, being free, while the man in our relief has put the arm in the supporting the made from his garment. The treatment by Barua of our inscription No. B 80 (for particulars cf. below) is a further example to show on what unfounded suppositions his identifications are sometimes based. It is also characteristic of the method of Barua, to see how he deals with a small fragment of a coping stone, that is presented in the Indian Museum and has been reproduced for the first time in Barhut III, Pl. LXXV (98). Barua completes the sculpture which bears our inscription B 65 (cf. our treatment) by the photograph of another which, however, as everybody will see at first sight, does not fit in with the former. In this way he finds it possible to identify the relief with the Indasamānagottaj. (161) or with the Mittāmittaj. (197)[3]. Barua’s lack of knowledge and feeding for the language has also become a rich source of errors. Barua and Sinha show often in their interpretations of labels a disregard for even the most simple rules of phonology. The inscription B 45 reads Sechhajataka. It is probably not to be expected of the authors to know that sechha is the western form of Sanskrit śaiksha and that sekha, the eastern form, has been taken over into Pāli, but the identification of seccha with siñcha, secha, under express rejection of the right etymology, and the translation based thereon as ‘a Jātaka-episode of water-drawing’[4], is more than can be forgiven even to a beginner. One may judge the Koḍāyo in our inscription B 72 as one likes, but that it cannot go back to Kodṛi-rāja or koṭṭarāja and that it cannot mean ‘fort-keeper’[5] need scarcely be pointed out. On the name of the mountain Naḍoda occuring at different times in the labels (cf. B 70-76) it is said in BI. p. 98: “Naḍoda seems to equate with Nālada or Nārada, and is obviously used as a synonym for Gandhamādana, nala or nalada meaning a scented plant or mineral”. In the translations of the labels in Barhut II, p. 162, 165, 169, Naḍoda is accordingly simply substituted by “Mt. Nārada”. Any comment seems to me to be superfluous. The inscription B 66 Bramhadevo mānavako is translated as “the young [Rūpa-]Brahma deity Subrahmā”[6] or “the youthful Rūpabrahma deity”[7]; the scene has been explained as a greeting of the Buddha by the Brahmakāyika goddesses after he had attained Bodhi. That in fact would be a very curious representation of the event. But it is not necessary to deal with it any further, for the inscription can only mean ‘the young Brahmin Brahmadeva’, and that any relation of the relief to the Rūpabrahman goddesses is missing is obvious.
Finally even representations rightly explained for a long time have been wrongly
interpreted by Barua. The story of the bullock and the jackal forming the basis of the relief on
[1] Vaij., 95, 299; Trik., 532; Hem. Abh., 679; Gaut., 2, 14; Manu 4, 112 ; kritvā chaivāvasakthikāṁ nādhīyīta, rightly translated by Bühler as ‘while he sits on his hams with a cloth tied round his knees, let him not
study’. In the Buddhist Sanskrit the word has been distorted to utsaktikā; Mvp., 263, 19 notsaktikayā, 263, 85 notsaktikākṛit āyāglānāya dharmaṁ deśayishyāmaḥ. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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