North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

B 50 (694)^[1]; PLATES XX, XLI

ON a coping-stone, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta. Edited by Cunningham, StBh. (1879), p. 76 f.; 130, No. 5, and Pl. XLVII and LIII; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 61, No. 6, and Pl.; IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 227, No. 6; Barua-Sinha, BI. (1926), p. 87, No. 203; Barua, Barh. Vol. II (1934), p. 120 f. and Vol. III (1937), Pl. XIII (114); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), p. 134.

TEXT:
Sujato gahuto j[a]taka

TRANSLATION:
The Jataka (entitled) ‘the mad Sujata’ (Sujata)^[2].

  On the left side of the relief a humped bull is resting on the ground with the forepart of the body raised. To the right, in front of the bull, a boy with long hair combed back is shown in crouching position. With his right hand he holds a bunch of grass up to the bull and is apparently trying to feed it. A man with a turban stands behind him holding his left arm and hand across his breast while his right hand is just to be seen above the head of the boy.

   Cunningham already rightly identified this scene as representing the Sujātajātaka (352). According to the story a landlord in Benares became so much afflicted with sorrow at his father’s death, that he did not leave the memorial where his father’s bodily remains were deposited, neglecting his business, forgetting bathing and eating and always lamenting bitterly. His son Sujāta, who according to the Samodhāna is Buddha in one of his former births, cures the grief of his father in an ingenious manner. He goes outside the city where a dead ox^[3] is lying and offers grass and water to the animal asking it repeatedly to eat and drink. People passing by wonder at it and go to tell the father that his son apparently had become mad. Now the father forgets his sorrow, goes to his son and reproaches him for his senseless behavior. But the son points out that the bull lying before him is still having a head, feet and tail, so that there is much more hope to see it stand alive once again than the dead grand-father, whose body has totally vanished, but for whom the father continues to grieve in total neglect of all his duties. Thus the father realizes the foolishness of his lamentations and is neglect of all his sorrow.

   Cunningham hesitatingly proposed to translate the inscription “Birth as Sujāta the Bull-inviter”, taking gahuto as a compound-word, made out of go or gav a bull, and huto from the root hve to call, invite, or summon. Barua-Sinha call this translation ‘quite reasonable’, but take gohuto as a compound corresponding to Sk. gobhṛit or Pāli gobhato, gobhatako which according to them means a cow-server or cow-feeder. Hultzsch on the other hand refuses to see in gahuto a compound-word and takes it as Sk. gṛihītaḥ ‘caught, seized, surprised, or understood’. He is followed by Lüders who in his List translates gahuta as ‘mad’. This explanation would correspond to the word ummattako occurring in the Pali Jataka.

B 51 (810); PLATES XX, XLII

ON a pillar, now at Pataora. Edited by Cunningham, StBh. (1879), p. 65 ff.; 139, No. 97, and Pl. XXVI and LV; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 76, No. 155; IA.
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^[1]The treatment of this inscription does not occur in the remnants of Lüders’ manuscript.
^[2]We give the translation according to the one appearing in Lüders’ List, which seems to us more probable than the explanation of Barua-Sinha referred to below.
^[3]In the relief, however, the bull does not lie on the earth like a dead animal, but, as already mentioned, has the forepart of his body raised. Its attitude is like that of a ruminating animal.