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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS southern or western variety of the Gupta alphabet as in the case of the Sāñchī inscription. The medial i in these records has, however, more flourish than in the Sāñchī inscription where it is just a circle on the top of the letter. Such a feature appears in earlier records like the Nāndsā Yūpa inscriptions1 of the 3rd century A.D. Thus, from the palaeographical point of view, these records can be assigned to about the 4th century A.D. and this dating is supported by the stylistic features of the Jaina images bearing the inscriptions. The prabhāvalī of the images is not so much developed and stylised as in the case of the Buddha images at Sāñchī attributed to the 5th century A.D.2 The fact that only chakra is represented in the centre of the pedestals of the images and not the characteristic lāñchhanas of the respective Tīrthaṅkaras also indicates the early stage in the development of Jaina iconography. In respect of orthography, it may be noted that the consonant following r is doubled in Sarppasēna (A) and that the class-nasal is used in the words Chandraprabha (A), Pushpadanta (B) and Chhandrakshama° (A and B). The language of the three records is Sanskrit. The two inscriptions on A and B contain 4 lines each and give identical text in the first two lines except the name of the image. The inscription on C also appears to be in 4 lines with a similar draft. While the record on A states that the image of Chandraprabha was caused to be made by Mahārājādhirāja Rāmagupta, that on B refers to the making of the image of Pushpadanta by the same ruler. The name of the image in C appears to read Padmaprabha. The record on A further informs us that this act of Rāmagupta (viȥ. the making of the image of Chandraprabha) was done on the advice or at the instance (upadēśa) of Chēlla-kshamaṇa, son of Gōlakyāntī and disciple of Āchārya Sarppasēna-kshamaṇa and the grand-disciple (i.e., disciple’s disciple) of the Jaina teacher who is described as pāṇipātrika-Chandraksham-āchārya- as Chandrakshamaṇ-āchārya instead of Chandraksham-āchārya. The epithet pāṇipātrika indicates that the Jaina monk was eating with his hands as bowl. In the record on B the name of the person at whose instance the image was made as well as that of his immediate teacher and also the names of parents, if any, are lost in the damaged portion at the end of the record. This portion in the inscription on C is completely effaced and nothing can be made out.
The importance of these records lies in the fact that they refer to Mahārājādhirāja Rāmagupta. From the assumption of the title of Mahārājādhirāja, Rāmagupta must have been an imperial ruler and since the records have been assigned to the 4th century A.D., he must be regarded as an imperial king of the Gupta dynasty holding sway over the Vidiśā region. If this identity is accepted, then these inscriptions will be of unique importance since they furnish the first epigraphical mention Rāmagupta of the imperial Gupta dynasty of Magadha. The controversy regarding the existence and historicity of Rāmagupta is well known to all the scholars of Indian history and particularly of Gupta history. This controversy has been going on for about half a century, ever since the discovery in 1923 of the portions of the Sanskrit drama called Dēvīchandraguptam by Viśākhadatta and it gained fresh momentum after the discovery of some copper coins ascribed to Rāmagupta in 1951 and afterwards.3 From the evidence of the drama Dēvīchandraguptam and other literary sources and epigraphic references of later period, scholars have tried to reconstruct the story of Ramagupta
1 Ep. Ind., Vol. XXVII, pp. 252 ff. and plate.
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