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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
LITERARY HISTORY found there. It may, however, be contended that the texts quoted above are from hymns that are of religious or philosophical character. They are not from literature which may be reasonably styled Kāvya. But it may be urged against it that if the religious and philosophical hymns contain so many and so varied examples of Alaṁkāra, the secular literature of the period must have been as much saturated with this important element of Artificial Poetry as it was from 150 A. D. onwards. We should now turn to the evidence supplied by Epigraphy which militates against the views of Max Müller. The idea of utilizing inscriptions in connection with the development of Artificial Poetry occurred first to the late Christian Lassen, who, in 1874, in his Indische Alterthumskunde1 has referred to the significance of the Girnār inscription and Harishēṇa’s praśasti engraved on the Aśōka pillar at Allahābād. But his reference to these epigraphs is very brief and incidental, and his work left much to be desired. What flood of light inscriptions throw upon this subject was first shown systematically and at length by G. Bühler in 1890 in his learned disquisition Die Indischen Inschriften und Das Alter der Indischen Kunstpoesie.2 Therein he has selected four epigraphic records for a full and exhaustive treatment. The first is Vatsabhaṭṭi’s wholly metrical praśasti about the temple of the Sun at Mandasōr, dated Vikrama year 529 = 472-73 A.D. in the reign of Kumāragupta I. The second is an earlier record, but of the Gupta Age, namely, Harishēṇa’s panegyric of Samudragupta, engraved between 375-90 A.D., on the Allahābād pillar, referred to above. The third is a still earlier inscription, namely, the Girnār inscription dated (Śaka) 72 ( = 150 A.D.) in the reign of Mahākshatrapa Rudradāman; and the fourth is the Nasik cave inscription, dated in the nineteenth regnal year of Śrī-Pulumāvi (circa 125 A.D.). With the help of these inscriptions Bühler has come to the incontrovertible conclusion that Artificial Poetry was in full bloom as early as even the second century A.D., that the Indo-Scythian princes, who invaded India about the beginning of the Christian era, not only began to bear Indian names in the second generation but also had distinct leanings towards Indian systems of religion, and that they had evinced willingness to appropriate the culture of their subjects, a most vivid example of which is furnished by Poetry being described as a personal occupation with the Mahākshatrapa Rudradāman. Those who are interested in the subject will do well to read and digest this classical dissertation of Bühler. We are, however, here concerned with only two of the four inscriptions treated at length by him, namely, those of the Gupta period. But we shall take them in their chronological order and show what light they shed on the literary activity of that age. All the important points noticed by Bühler will also be here duly considered, not shrinking from the criticism of this illustrious Indologist where we have an honest difference of opinion.
Harishēṇa’s Panegyric of Samudragupta
The Gupta inscription that we shall now examine is Harishēṇa’s praśasti of Samudragupta engraved on the Allahābād pillar. It consists of thirty-two lines and a half, with eight
stanzas at the beginning, a long prose passage in the middle, and, one stanza, again, at the end.
“All the three parts together,” says Bühler, “form one single, gigantic sentence.”3 This, how- 1 2nd edn., pt. II, pp. 1159-60 and 1169-70.
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