North Indian Inscriptions

POLITICAL HISTORY

of the Meharauli inscription as the place where the iron pillar was originally set up. It thus, at one sweep, tells us where Vālhīka and Vishṇupada are to be located, namely, not far from the source of the Vipāśā or Beas in the Himālayas.

       Further, we have to note that Vālhīkas have been mentioned again in the Rāmāyaṇa in two consecutive chapters. Thus in the Kishkindhā-Kāṇḍa (Rām. IV. 43. 12) they have been described as living in the north and distinguished from the Kambōjas, Yavanas and Śakas, whereas in IV. 42. 6 they are described as situated in the west and mentioned along with Surāshṭras.¹ This agrees with the Kāśikā on Pāṇini VIII. 4. 9, where we read Sauvīra-pāṇā Bāhlīkāḥ, “the Bāhlīkas are fond of Sauvīra drink”. This shows that according to the Rāmāyaṇa the Vālhīkas occupied not only Sindhu and Sauvīra but also the north-west and north-east parts of the Panjab. They probably denote the (later Great) Kushāṇas who were the last foreign horde to migrate into India from Balkh.

       The mention of the Vālhīkas as being vanquished by Chandra after crossing the seven mouths of the sindhu is thus quite intelligible. It will thus be seen that while in the time of Samudragupta the Gupta dominions extended westward only so far as to include East Rajputana and East Panjab, in the reign of Chandragupta II they extended further westward so as to comprise Sind and the whole of the Panjab.

       The second stanza of the Meharauli pillar inscription is a hard nut to crack. It has been completely misunderstood by J. F. Fleet, and he has drawn the specious conclusion that “the inscription is a posthumous eulogy of the conquests of a powerful king named Chandra as to whose lineage no information is given.”² And he has been followed by Allan³ and other scholars. It is the first two lines of this stanza that are more important. The first of these is: khinnasy=ēva visṛijya gāṁ narapatēr=ggām=āśritasy=ētarāṁ. What this means is that Chandra has left one gō and is now resorting to another gō. What does gō mean in each case? Fleet translates it thus: “he, the king, as if wearied, has quitted this earth, and has gone to the other world, . . . .” Fleet thus implies that Chandra quitted one gō, that is, the earth, and went to another, that is, ‘the other world’. And, as a matter of fact, gō has the three senses of ‘the earth’, ‘the sky’, and ‘the heaven’. Consequently, no exception can be taken to Fleet’s rendering so far as this sentence stands. But the crucial test is furnished by line 2 of the stanza, namely, mūrt[t] yā karmma-jit-āvaniṁ gatavataḥ kīr[t]tyā sthitasya kshitau, “moving in (bodily) form to the land (paradise) won by (the merit of his) actions.” Here the most important word is mūrttyā, which Fleet has rightly translated by ‘bodily form’. But the question arises: how can Chandra, or, for the matter of that, any human being, go to ‘the land (of paradise)’ in (bodily) form’? The obvious conclusion is that Chandra was not dead when the eulogy was inscribed on the iron pillar. If mūrttyā must mean ‘in bodily form’ and as no human being can go to the other world in his corporeal form, karma-jit-āvaniṁ cannot possibly be translated by “to the land (of paradise) won by (the merit of his) actions”, as Fleet has done. The two lines of the stanza have thus to be so translated as to do away with the preconception that Chandra was dead when the pillar was set up. They may therefore be rendered as follows: “who, the king, having quitted this gō (earth), as if being dejected, has resorted to another gō (sky) ; who, though he has, in body, gone to the land (avani) conquered by (his own) action, has remained on the soil of the earth (kshiti) by fame.” What do these verses mean? As stanza 3 of this eulogy tells us, the column was originally put up at Vishṇupada. This Vishṇupada, we know, was a
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¹ In the second quotation Vālhīkas have been omitted in the Bombay recension. In the other two they have been mentioned in both the places though in the Bangali recension the quotations are found in IV, 43, 5 and IV, 44, 13.
² CII., Vol. III, 1888, p. 140.
³ Catalogue of the Coins of the Gupta Dynasty, Intro., p. xxxvii.