North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

with Ajakālaka. Barua-Sinha have identified Ajakālaka with the Yaksha Ajakalāpaka who in Ud. I, 7 is said to have had his dwelling at the Ajakalāpaka chaitya in Pāvā. In a dark rainy night he tried to frighten the Buddha by uttering horrid cries, but only with the effect that the Buddha pronounced an udāna. Although it would be quite appropriate that a Yaksha of the demoniac class should be associated with Kubera, it is difficult to account for the difference of the final member of the names. Hultzsch had carried back Ajakālaka to Sk. Ādyakālaka, an explanation not very satisfactory in itself, and not made more reliable by the remarks made by Barua and Sinha in its support, for I, at least, take it as most improbable that a local Yaksha should be “a terrible embodiment of the ruthless unborn Time, destroying living beings, whose essence is immortality”. Besides the form Ajakalāpaka which according to Barua and Sinha is just a side form of Ajakālaka cannot be brought into agreement with this explanation. The Commentary to the Ud. offers two explanations: Ajakalāpaka is either ‘some one making a bundle of goats’ because the Yaksha accepts gifts only together with a tied up group of goats; or Ajakalāpaka ‘some one who makes men bleat like goats’, because people, when offering gifts shout like goats in order to satisfy him (so kira yakkho aje kalāpetvā bandhanena ajakoṭṭhāsena saddhiṃ baliṃ paṭicchati no aññathā tasmā Ajakalāpako ti paññāyittha | keci pana ajake viya satte lāpetīti Ajakalāpako ti | tasa kira sattā baliṃ upanetvā yadā ajasaddaṃ katvā baliṃ upaharantī tadā so tussati | tasmā Ajakalāpaka ti vuccatīti | ). Although I am of the opinion that the first part of the name is a word for goat, I think the explanations of the commentary are unacceptable. If both names have to be connected, which I think probable, it is nearest to take kālaka and kalāpaka as noun formations to the causative of a roof kal that could as well form kālayati and kalāpayati. Perhaps this kālayati or kalāpayati had the same meaning as Sk. kālayati ‘to make some one run before oneself’, ‘to persecute’, ‘to scare away’, ‘drive off”.

B 4 (736); PLATES XVI, XXX

ON the middle face of the same pillar as Nos. A 95, B 5, and B 6, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta (P 1). Edited by Cunningham, PASB. 1874, p. 111; StBh. (1879), p. 20; 134, No. 25, and Pl. LIII; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 65, No. 43, and Pl.; IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 230, No. 43; Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 65, No. 172; Barua, Barh., Vol. II (1934), p. 57 f. and Vol. III (1937), Pl. LV and LVII (58); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), p. 10.

TEXT:
Viruḍako yakho

TRANSLATION:
The Yaksha Viruḍaka (Virūḍhaka).

  The pillar P 1 shows three male figures, each on one side. Our inscription refers to the middle figure, the right and left arm of which is united with arm of the adjoining figure
__________________________

^[1]The explanation given above is the one offered by Lüders, Bhārh., p. 14f.─Earlier in his manuscript he had suggested the following derivation: “May we assume that Ajakālaka is a corruption of Ajagālaka and that Ajakalāpaka is a corruption of Ajagalāpaka or Ajagalāvaka, gōlaka and galāpaka being derived from the causative of gal ‘to devour’, which may be gāleti or galāpeti? That Ajakalāpaka contains aja, the word for goat, appears from the commentary. However, it cannot be denied that ajagara ‘devourer of goats’, which in Pāli sometimes, e.g. J. 427, 2, is corrupted into ajakara, would seem to be a more suitable name than ‘causing goats to be devoured’, and so my suggestion must be taken for what it is worth”. For an explanation as ajaka-lāpaka cf. M. A. Mehendale, S. K. Belvalkar Felicitation Volume, p. 13.