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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
RELIGIOUS HISTORY thus hardly be a doubt that the Kuśika of our record must be regarded as the first pupil of Lakulin and that the four Āchāryas mentioned in the Mathurā record were, of course, his descendants. In the Cintra praśasti three Āchāryas are mentioned, the last of whom, Tripurāntaka, was a contemporary of Sāraṅgadēva during whose reign it was incised. From verse 19 of this inscription it is quite clear that these teachers belonged to the line (gōtra) of Gārgya or Gārgēya. While the Cintra praśasti gives an account of the ascetic teachers who sprung up in the line of Gārgya, the second pupil of Lakulin, the Mathurā record throws light upon the line of teachers that was founded by Kuśika, the first disciple of Lakulin. In other words, it appears that while some descendants of Gārgya established themselves at Sōmnāth in Kāṭhiāwāḍ, those of Kuśika did at Mathura.
It is evident that the teachers mentioned in the Mathurā record pertained to the Lakulin sect. There are two or three points connected with this sect which now require to be cleared up. We are told that Uditāchārya, who was the teacher then living, installed Upamitēśvara and Kapilēśvara named after Upamita and Kapila who were his teacher and teacher’s teacher respectively. What did Upamitēśvara and Kapilēśvara denote? As the ending īśvara shows, they denote Śiva liṅga established in memory of those teachers. But where were they put up? Certainly in the Teachers’ Shrine (Gurv-āyatana), as we are expressly told. This shows that there must have been many other liṅgas established in perpetuation of the memory of other teachers, in fact, of all teachers from Kuśika to Upamita (both inclusive). Now, if these memorials in the Teachers’ Shrine were all liṅgas, how could they be distinguished one from the other? How could we say that one liṅga represented one Teacher; and another, another? The natural surmise would be that every one of the liṅgas so put up contained the portrait of a Teacher. Is it to remain a mere surmise, or does it receive confirmation from any extraneous source? In this connection we have to draw attention to another paper on Lakulin which we contributed elsewhere, namely, to the Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report.1 There, we have shown that wherever Lakulin appears, he figures as a human being, invariably with two hands and with his characteristic signs, namely, a Lakuṭa or staff in his left hand, a citron in his right, and above all, with ūrdhva-mēḍhra. There are, however, two representations of his, at Kārvāṇ-the place of his incarnation as Śiva-one found in the shrine of Nakulēśvara and the other, in that of Rājarājēśvara. Both of course are liṅgas, but their characteristic feature is that they have combined, each, with a representation of Lakulin, into one image, pointing of course to his absorption into the divinity of Śiva. It is therefore not at all unreasonable to suppose in the case of Upamitēśvara and Kapilēśvara that they were Śiva liṅgas with portraits of Upamita and Kapila carved into them. In fact, they were merged into the godhead of Śiva. That is the reason why all the departed Āchāryas mentioned in the Mathurā inscription have been styled Bhagavat, but the living teacher, namely, Uditāchārya has been called simply Ārya. The question that now arises is: how were the demised Āchāryas absorbed into the divinity of Śiva? In this connection we have to take note of the following passage from the Purāṇas2 adverted to above. ................Tatr=āpi mama tē putrā bhavishyanti tapasvinaḥ / 1 1906-07, pp. 179 ff.
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