North Indian Inscriptions

POLITICAL HISTORY

Jaina and three Buddhistic. Of the former, one is dated Gupta year 107 (No. 18 below). It is engraved on the base of an image of a large sitting Jina, originally unearthed in the Kaṅkālī Ṭīlā at Mathurā and now deposited in the Provincial Museum at Lucknow. The inscription was first deciphered by Bühler who read the date as 113 (?). But the date is clearly 107 and mentions the twentieth day of the intercalary month Śrāvaṇa. It is thus equivalent to the English year 426-27 when Śrāvaṇa was an additional month. It further records that the Jina image was set up by Śāmāḍhyā, daughter of Bhaṭṭibhava and wife of Guhamitrapālita, who was a Prārtharika (=Prāstarika), apparently a lapidary. The second of the Jaina inscriptions¹ is dated Gupta year 106. And, although it does not refer to the reign of any king, there can be no doubt that it must belong to the time of Kumāragupta I. It is engraved in Cave No. 10 of Udayagiri near Bhilsa. The object thereof is to record the installation of an image of the Jina Pārśva, that is, the Tīrthaṁkara Pārśvanātha, at the mouth of the cave, by a Jaina monk, whose religious name is not given, but who was a pupil of the teacher Gōśarman, himself descended from the teacher Bhadra. The secular name of the donor was Śaṅkara, and we are told that he was a son of Saṅghila-Ripughna through Padmāvatī. We are further told that he hailed from some country in the north which was as exquisite as that of the Northern Kurus.

       Of the three Buddhist inscriptions of the time of Kumāragupta, one is engraved on the front of the pedestal of a seated image of the Buddha originally found in Mankuwar in the Allahabad District, but now deposited in the State Museum, Lucknow. It is dated Gupta year 129 and refers itself to the reign of this sovereign (No. 25 below). It records the installation of the Buddha image by a Bhikshu named Buddhamitra whom the late K.B. Pathak identified with a Bhikshu of the same name, who was the teacher of Vasubandhu, whose patrons, according to Paramārtha, were Skandagupta-Vikramāditya and Narasiṁhagupta-Bālāditya. In this record Kumāragupta has been styled simply Mahārāja, not Mahārājādhirāja, as has been done in other inscriptions. Fleet indulges in the surmise that this possibly points to the king’s reduction to the feudal rank, about the close of his life, caused by the rebellion of the Pushyamitras and the inroads of the Hūṇas adverted to in the Bhitarī epigraph of Skandagupta (No. 31 below). But this is most unlikely as these political disturbances took place, not in his, but in his successor’s reign, as we will see later on. Nor are the titles always a safe criterion to the rank of a ruler. During the Kushāṇa period the titles attached to the name of a sovereign are Mahārāja and Rājātirāja. As the latter signifies ‘King over kings’, the former must be taken to mean ‘the great king’. It is in this sense that the title Mahārāja appears to have been coupled with the name of Kumāragupta. The other two Buddhist inscriptions do not refer themselves to the reign of this Gupta monarch. Nevertheless, from the dates, they have to be assigned to his time. One of these,² dated Gupta year 131, refers to three different grants by a Buddhist Upāsikā, named Harisvāminī, wife of Upāsaka Sanasiddha, made to the Ārya-Saṁgha at the Great Buddhist Convent of Kākanadabōṭa near the great Stūpa at Sāñchī, for the purpope of feeding one Bhikshu daily and for maintaining lamps in the Ratna-gṛiha and in front of the seats of the Four Buddhas. The third Buddhist inscription³ is from Mathurā and is incised on the pedestal of an image which was itself presented by one Dēvatā, who describes herself as Vihārasvāminī or ‘Lady Superintendent of Vihāra’. It is dated Gupta year 135 (=453-54 A.D.), and probably belongs to the end of Kumāragupta’s reign as one coin of his gives 136 as a date for him.

       The coins of Kumāragupta throw light also on the titles or epithets he bore. The most pre-eminent of this was Mahēndra which was to him what Vikrama was to Chandragupta II,
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¹ CII., Vol. III, 1888, No. 61, pp. 258 ff.
² Ibid., No. 62, pp. 260 ff.
³ Ibid., No. 63, pp. 262 ff.