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PART B
mistake for chetiyaṁ. The explanation of chātiyaṁ as loc. sg. of P. chāṭi ‘ pot, vessel ’ given by
Barua and Sinha is linguistically impossible, apart from the fact that in the relief no vessel
of any kind is represented. Likewise I cannot agree with Barua-Sinha’s identification of the
relief with the Mātiposakaj. (455). In the Jātaka it is narrated that the Bodhisattva was
once reborn as an elephant. He was captured to serve the king of Kāsī as state elephant,
but was released by the same king when the latter heard that the elephant had to nourish
his blind mother left behind in the forest. When the Bodhisattva had returned to his
mother he sprinkled her with water from a lotus pond. Now we find in the relief indeed two
elephants and also a brook which could perhaps take the place of the lotus pond; but it is
not depicted how the one elephant besprinkles the other. This besprinkling is an essential
part of the story. It is not only to be seen from the fact that it is expressly mentioned in the
Gāthās; it has also led to a further development of the legend. The Mvu. where the
Jātaka occurs (Vol. III, p. 130 ff.) and the Fo-pȇn-hing-tsi-king (Beal, Rom. Leg., p. 366 ff.)
narrate that the elephant’s mother regained her eye-sight by the besprinkling, in the
same way as the blind Mahāprajāpati regained the power to see when the water at the mahāprātihārya in Kapilavastu streamed down on her. Besides it is expressly stated in
G. 4 ff. of the Jātaka that the noble elephant lived with his mother on the mountain
Chaṇḍoraṇa. In the prose narration is added that, after the death of his mother, he went
into the hermitage Karaṇḍaka. There the king erected a stone image of the elephant, and
men from all India used to assemble at the spot every year to celebrate the festival of the
elephant. In the Mvu. the mountain on which the elephant and his mother stayed is called
Chaṇḍagiri, a hill in front of the Himavat. These particulars are not in conformity with the
inscription which says that the Chaitya was on the Aboda.
Hoernle[1] took Aboda as equivalent
of Sk. Arbuda, the old name of the famous mountain Ābū, but it is not probable that the u in Arbuda should have become o. On the other hand the landscape represented shows decisively that Aboda is the name of a mountain. This is confirmed by the form of the name.
No less than six times in the Bhārhut inscriptions the name Naḍoda is found, twice with
the addition pavata, and a mountain Ṛikshoda is mentioned as the birth place of brahmins
in the Kāśikā on Pāṇ, 4, 3, 91: Ṛikshodaḥ parvato ’ bhijana eshāṁ brāhmaṇānām Ārkshodā
brāhmaṇāḥ. Whatever the second part[2] of the name may be, its composition with naḍa ‘read’ and ṛiksha ‘ bear ’ makes it almost certain that Aboda contains the word āmra ‘ mango ’. Abode accordingly is written in the normal fashion for aṁbode. The Chaitya on the Amboda, the
mango-mountain, was probably a sanctuary of local importance. In the relief its veneration
by elephants carrying offerings is represented; cf. similar reliefs on Cunningham’s Pl. XXX
2 (B 70-72) and XLVI 6.
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[1]IA. X, p. 120.
I am of the opinion that these names of mountains, like Himavat etc., are formed with the
suffix-vat. Ṛikshavat, Naḍavat, Āmravat were transferred in Prakrit to the a-flexion and with the
softening of t to d and wish contraction of ava to o became Achchhoda, Naḍoda and Aṁboda. Ṛikshoda
is a result of incomplete Sanskritisation. The correct Sanskrit form Ṛikshavat is attested in the Epics
and in the works of Kālidāsa.
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