North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

Name^[1]. It seems, however, unbelievable that dīgha can mean ‘venerable’, and it is more probable that the explanation in MA. III, 52 is correct where it is said ‘Dīghatapassī ti dighattā evaṁ laddhanāmo’, that Dīghatapassī received his name on account of his long stature. Lüders takes the word as a proper name in his List and further asserts in Bhārh. p. 3, n. 4, that Dighatapasi cannot mean ‘the venerable ascetic’ but is apparently a proper name.

B 64 (697); PLATES XXI, XLVI

ON a coping-stone, now in the Indian Museum, Calcutta (A 23). Edited by Cunningham, StBh. (1879), p. 96; 130, No. 8, and Pl. XLVII and LIII; Hultzsch, ɀDMG. Vol. XL (1886), p. 61, No. 9, and Pl. ; IA. Vol. XXI (1892), p. 228, No.9; Barua-Sinha BI. (1926), p. 83, No. 195; Barua, Barh. Vol. II (1934), p. 97 f. and Vol. III (1937), Pl. LXXV (97); Lüders, Bhārh. (1941), p. 3.

TEXT:
Asaḍā vadhu susāne sigalañati.

TRANSLATION:
The young woman Asaḍā (Ashāḍhā). The announcement to the jackals on the burial-ground.

   The sculpture shows a woman seated on a tree to which she clings with both hands. She is evidently addressing three jackals sitting below under another tree. In the foreground a man is lying either sleeping or dead, but as according to the inscription the scene is a burial-ground, he is probably meant for a corpse.

   Cunningham’s suggestion that the sculpture refers to the story of the origin of the Koḷiyas as told in SnA., p. 354 ff., cannot be accepted. The scene of that story is not a burial-ground, but a forest. The name of the leprous princess is not Asāḷhā, but Piyā, and she does not live on a tree, but in a pit. The man lying on the ground cannot be king Rāma, who does not appear in that situation in the story, and there are no jackals connected with the legend. Barua-Sinha think that the label may perhaps be taken to refer to a scene of a Jātaka episode similar to one of the Asilakkhaṇajātaka (No. 126). It is unnecessary to enter into the details of that Jātaka, as the similarity is very small. The scene of the Jātaka story, it is true, is a burial-ground, but neither the sitting of the woman on the tree nor the presence of the jackals agrees with it.

   As long as the story represented in the relief has not been identified, the meaning of the last two words of the inscription cannot be established with certainty. As ñati can hardly be a verbal expression, the words seem to form a compound. Hultzsch was inclined to take sigālañati as a clerical error for sigāle ñati =Sk. śṛigālāñ jñātrī, ‘who has observed the jackals’. But this is extremely improbable, since the term sigāle ñati could only mean ‘the habitual observer of the jackals’, which, of course, is out of question. Barua-Sinha translate: ‘The woman Āshāḍhā, the jackals in a funeral ground, (her) kinsmen’, taking ñati as the equivalent of Sk. jñāti. I agree with Barua-Sinha in dividing the label into two parts, which is supported by the fact that Asaḍā vadhu is separated by a blank from the rest of the inscription, but I would prefer to derive ñati from Sk. jñapti and to refer sigālañati to some announcement made by the woman to the jackals^[2].
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^[1]Barua gives the choice to identify the representation either with the Mūlapariyāyajātaka (245) or the Tittirajātaka (438) ‘both giving an account of a far-famed ascetic teacher instructing his pupils’. These identifications are too vague to be convincing. See above Introduction p. X.
^[2]it seems very probably that the woman sitting on the tree makes an appeal on behalf of the man lying on the ground (sleeping or wounded ?) to the jackals looking up at her.