North Indian Inscriptions

POLITICAL HISTORY

Fleet’s translation the only one possible? In this connection attention may be drawn to what Krishnaswami Aiyangar¹ has said about the word utsanna, used the Aśvamēdha in the Śata- patha-Brāhmaṇa. But the pity of it is that he did not think it worth his while to develop this point at all. And what is more pitiful is that he does not even tell us in which part of this Brāhmaṇa the word utsanna has been employed with reference to Aśvamēdha. Nevertheless, we will try and develop this point as best as we can. It is in Kāṇḍa XIII of the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa that Aśvamēdha has been called utsanna-yajña iva. We will quote the whole passage bearing on this point: Saṁkṛity=Achchhāvāka-sāma bhavati | utsanna-yajñā iva vā ēsha yad=Aśvamēdhaḥ | kiṁ vā hy=ētasya kkriyatē kiṁ vā na | yat=Saṁkṛity=Achchhāvāka-sāma bhavati Aśvasy=aiva sarvatvāya |² “The Saṁkṛiti (tune) is the Achchhāvāka’s Sāman. Verily what is (called) Aśvamēdha is, as it were, a decayed sacrifice. Because something thereof is performed, and something not. When the Saṁkṛiti is the Achchhāvāka’s Sāman, it is for (bringing about) the completeness of the Horse (Sacrifice).” This translation follows in the main that given by Eggeling.³ In the footnote to his translation he has quoted some commentary bearing on this passage. Part of it is worth repeating here: utsanna-yajña ēsha yaḥ Aśvamēdhaḥ | katham utsanna ity=ata= āha-kiṁ vā h=īti | yasya dharmāḥ pūrva-yōnau (yugē ?) prayujyantē tēshāṁ kiṁchit kalau kriyatē kiṁchin=na kriyatē | tataś=cha Saṁkṛitir=Achchhāvāka-sāma bhavati | In the same footnote Eggeling says that a similar passage is found also in the Taittirīya-saṁhitā (V. 4.12.3). If we examine it, we find that it also contains the words: utsanna-yajñō vai ēsha yad=Aśvamēdhaḥ | Sāyaṇa in his gloss upon it explains it by saying that it is utsanna-yajña, because some parts of it (avayava) were either vinashṭa, ‘utterly lost’, or ativismṛita, ‘completely forgotten’, and that it was consequently necessary to chant the Saṁkṛiti, namely, the Achchhāvāka’s Sāman, in order that the Aśvamēdha may be restored to sarv-āvayava-sākalya, “completeness through the totality of elements”.⁴

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If we thus take into our careful consideration the two Vedic passages relating to the Aśvamēdha together with commentaries thereupon, it is clear that some parts of the sacrifice were long ago either lost or forgotten,⁵ that the whole and entire sacrifice could not thus be performed and that hence arose the necessity of chanting the Saṁkṛiti, just adverted to, to rectify this defect. This is why Aśvamēdha was known as utsanna-yajña “a dilapidated sacrifice”. It will thus be seen that it is not simply the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa but also the Taittirīya-saṁhitā where the sacrifice has been so designated. And the commentaries concur practically as to the signification of the term utsanna. When therefore the Gupta inscriptions speak of Samudragupta’s Aśvamēdha as chirōtsanna, the term utsanna in this phrase cannot but be taken in the same sense. We have therefore to suppose that Aśvamēdha had remained utsanna for a long time, up till the time of this Gupta sovereign, but that, whether on account of his expedition in the south where Vedic lore and practices are still better preserved or on account of some other circumstances about which we know nothing at present, the elements of this sacrifice which were so long taken as lost or forgotten were recovered beyond all doubt and that in consequence thereof he celebrated the Aśvamēdha, whole and entire, without any one of its original elements missing.

       We have remarked above that although the records of Samudragupta do not speak about his Aśvamēdha, the inscriptions of his descendants make prominent mention of it. But they do so in two different phrases. One of these, namely, chir-ōtsann-Āśvamēdh-āharttā, we have just
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¹ Studies in Gupta History, pp. 44-45.
² Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa, XIII, 3.3.6.
³ SBE., Vol. XLIV, pp. 333-34.
⁴ Taittirīya-saṁhitā, (Bibliotheca Indica), Vol. V, pp. 114-15.
⁵ This explains why we have a double description of the Aśvamēdha in the XIII Book of the Śatapatha-Br. (Adhyāyas 1-3 and 4-5), as has been so lucidly pointed out by W. Calland (Acta Orientalia, Vol. X, pp. 126 ff.). This double description naturally involves repetitions, discrepancies and even contradictions, though an attempt has been made to bring both the descriptions into harmony one with the other.