North Indian Inscriptions

RELIGIOUS HISTORY

with umbrella and post, but further asserts that it was the property of the teachers of the Sarvāstivādin school. It is thus clear that Bala pertained to the Sarvāstivādin sect. Unfortunately the date of the inscription has not been preserved, but there can be no doubt that it must have belonged to the time of either Kaṇishka or Husvishka. There is a third inscription which we have to take note of here. It was found near Mathurā. It is dated in the year 33 and refers itself to the reign of Huvishka.¹ It records that a Bōdhisattva was set up by the nun Dhanavatī, sister’s daughter of the nun Buddhamitrā, conversant with the Tripiṭaka and a female disciple of the monk Bala who knew the Tripiṭaka. There can thus be no doubt about the identity of this monk with the monk Bala mentioned in the Saheṭ-Mahṭe and Sārnāth inscriptions. The only point to notice is that here we have the seated image of Bōdhisattva. Further, we have to note that all the three statues must have been carved at Mathurā, because the material used in not the buff-coloured stone of the Chunār quarries of which all other Sārnāth sculptures are made, but it is the red sandstone from the quarries near Fatehpur-Sikri.² Again, it will be seen that the three images are of Bōdhisattva and that, whereas one of them is seated, the other two are standing figures. As Vogel has remarked, if they had not been inscribed, no one would have hesitated to call them images of Buddha.³ Both the royal dress and ornaments which were hitherto thought to characterise the Bōdhisattva are absent, and the figures wear only the plain attire of a Buddhist monk, such as is invariably associated with statues of the Buddha. But the inscriptions are quite explicit on the point in designating each Bōdhisattva. What then are we to understand by ‘Bōdhisattva’? According to Monier Williams, Bōdhisattva is “one who is on the way to the attainment of perfect knowledge, that is, a Buddhist saint when he has only one birth to undergo before obtaining the state of a supreme Buddha and then Nirvāṇa.” This is what you find also in Childers’ Pali Dictionary.

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In fact, this is how it is generally understood by students of Buddhism. This means that the word is not applicable to Buddha. But the three statues referred to above, no one would hesitate to call as those of Buddha. According to the inscriptions engraved on them, however, they are unquestionably images of Bōdhisattva. The conclusion is irresistible that Bōdhisattva here means Buddha. And, as a matter of fact, the primary sense of Bōdhisattva is “one whose essence is perfect knowledge”. In other words, it seems to be equivalent to Buddha. This suits here excellently. Because the term Buddha also was used by the Sarvāstivādins. We have only to turn to inscription A. II. incised on the Mathurā Lion Capital, which speaks of depositing in a stūpa a relic of Bhagavat Buddha. the Śākya sage.⁴ That this stūpa was in the possession of the Sarvāstivādins is clear from lines 15-16 of the same inscription. In thus seems that the terms Buddha and Bōdhisattva were used synonymously by the Sarvāstivādins. In the time of Fa-Hien (319-414 A.D.), the Sarvāstivādins were flourishing in Pāṭaliputra also as it was here that he secured a transcript of the Vinaya rules belonging to this school such as are observed by the communities of monks in the land of Ts’in.⁵ They were also strong in the Panjab as is clear from the Shōrkōṭ (Śibipura) inscription of the [Gupta] year 83.⁶ As regards the Sāṁmitīyas, though they could not prosper in the pre-Christian era, they gradually attained importance in North India during the Gupta period reaching the climax in the reign of Harshavardhana whose widowed sister Rājyaśrī was a Bhikshuṇī of this school.

       We have also take note of another Buddhist sect mentioned in a record of the Gupta
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¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. VIII, p. 182.
² Catalogue of the Museum of Archaeology at Sarnath (1914), pp. 36-37.
³ Ep. Ind., Vol. VIII, p. 178.
⁴ Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 141.
⁵ Fa-Hien’s Record of Buddhist Kingdoms by James Legge, p. 99.
⁶ Ep. Ind., Vol. XVI, p. 15.