North Indian Inscriptions

RELIGIOUS HISTORY

period. It is the Mandasor inscription¹ of Prabhākara dated Vikrama year 524=467 A.D. He was a feudatory of the Guptas and stationed at Daśapura, apparently as Charge d’ affaires. His army officer was Dattabhaṭa, who constructed a well together with a stūpa, prapā and orchard surrounding it, which, we are expressly told, were all included within the bounds of the vihāra of the Lōkōttaras. The latter must be the same as the Lōkōttaravāda or Lokōttaravādins of the Buddhist works. The Lōkōttaras, like the Chaityavādins, were an offshoot of the Mahāsāṁghikas, paving the way for the evolution of the Mahāyānism which later spread over the whole of India. There are three more Buddhist inscriptions to account for. They were found in excavations at Sārnāth, engraved on images. One of these belongs to the time of Kumāragupta II and the other two, of Budhagupta. They have been taken as statues of Buddha, but neither the word Buddha nor Bōdhisattva occurs in any one of them. Only one (No. 34 below) of these speaks of it as an image of Śāstā. And it is very difficult to determine to which sect exactly the inscription belonged. The word śāstā, however, is peculiar more to the Sthaviravāda than to any other Buddhist sect. And perhaps we shall not be wrong if we say that even in the later part of the Gupta period the Sthaviravāda school flourished at Sārnāth, or, rather at the place where the Buddha preached his first sermon.

       We have twice pointed out above that the special feature of the religious culture of the Gupta period was the development of the Yōga philosophy and practices. It produced an enduring effect not only on the Śaiva but also the Vaishṇava sects. It is, therefore, no wonder if it impressed itself strongly on the Buddhism of the period, especially of the Mahāyāna sect. In this connection we have to note the interest which the Buddhists of this sect took in the Yōga school of philosophy and which is clear from a perusal of the Life of Hieun-Tsiang, the Chinese pilgrim who visited India about the beginning of the seventh century. He had studied manifold systems of Indian philosophy in China, but the principal object of his pilgrimage was to obtain more knowledge of the Yōga-śāstra. On his way to India he met a learned Buddhist priest whom he interrogated: “Have you here the Yōga-śāstra or not ?”² Mōkshagupta branded it as a heretical work and further remarked that no true disciple of Buddha studied it. This made Hieun-Tsiang angry who now regarded him as dirt. And he rejoined: “In our country too we have long had the Vibhāshā and Kōsha; but I have been sorry to observe their logic superficial and their language weak: they do not speak of the highest perfection. On this account I have come so far as this, desiring to be instructed in the Yōga-śāstra belonging to the Great Vehicle. And the Yōga, what is it but the revelation of Maitrēya, the Bōdhisattva next to become Buddha, and to call such a book heretical, how is it you are not afraid of the bottomless pit?” This, no doubt, refers to a comparatively late period, that is, the beginning of the seventh century. But this clearly shows that the Gupta epoch which preceded it was characterised by the renovation of the Yōga philosophy and practices which were completely in the ascendant before Hiuen-Tsiang visited India. It was not Śaivism and Vaishṇavism only but also Buddhism, where Yōga became a dominant branch of heretic learning. The Yōga atmosphere of the Gupta period is reflected in the sculpture of India also, to which E.B. Havell was the first to draw our attention. “Physical beauty,” says he, “was to the Greeks a divine characteristic; the perfect human animal received divine honours from them, both before and after death.”³ The Greek, when he attempted to realise a divine ideal, thus took for his model the athlete or the warrior. In Indian art, however, mere bodily strength and mundane perfection of form are seldom glorified. The Indian artist takes as his
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¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. XXVII, p. 12-18.
² S. Beal’s Life of Hieun-Tsiang, p. 39.
³ Indian Sculpture and Painting, Second edition, pp. 9 and ff.