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THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS
by such qualities as piety, meditation and wisdom; which is considered to be the highest field
of merit;1 which has gathered together from the four quarters of the world; (and) which is the
abode of most eminent Śramaṇas, having prostrated himself in a circle of five (limbs),2 Āmrakār-
dava, son of Undāna whose means of subsistence has been augmented through the favour of
the feet of the Mahārājādhirāja, the prosperous Chandragupta (II), who is proclaiming to the
world the faithful spirit of a dependent who is an excellent man, whose banner of fame was the
victories achieved in many battles, (and) who is an inhabitant of (the town of) Nashṭī . . . in
the Sukuli country3 –gives Īśvaravāsaka . . . purchased with the price of the palaces4
Maja, Śarabhaṅga and Āmrarāta; and twenty-five dīnāras (as a permanent endowment);5
(Lines 7-9) with the (first) half of which,6 let five (Buddhist) mendicants be fed, and let a
lamp burn in the jewel house,7 as long as the moon and the sun (endure), for the attainment
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1 The Pāli form of punya-kshētra is puñña-kkhettaṁ which is thus explained by Childers in A Dictionary of the
Pāli Language: “field of merit, epithet of the Saṅgha or Buddhist clergy, because men acquire merit by showing
kindness or charity to them.”
2 According to Fleet, “pañcha-maṇḍalī is evidently the same as the Pañchāīt, Pañchāyat, or Pañch, of modern
times, the village-jury of five (or more) persons, convened to settle a dispute by arbitration etc.” The words that
are, however, found regularly used in inscriptions are (1) pāñchālī or Pāñchālika in Nepal inscriptions, No. 4, line
11 ; No. 7, lines 13 and 15 ; No. 10, line 16; No. 13, line 20 (Ind. Ant., Vol. IX, pp. 168, 170, 173 and 177) ; and
(2) pañchakula in Gujarat and Rajasthan inscriptions (D.R. Bhandarkar, A List of the Inscriptions of Northern India,
Nos. 565, 587 and 631); from which is derived the word pañchōlī prevalent still in Rajasthan and signifying ‘a
member of the Panch,’ and of which the abbreviated form pañcha0 is found prefixed to the names of some people,
though Kielhorn feels inclined to take it as “equivalent to pañchakalpin (pañchōlī) which occurs as an epithet of two
persons (father and son) in Prof. Weber’s Catalogue of the Berlin MSS., Vol. II, p. 96” (Ep. Ind., Vol. IX, pp.
106-07). The term pañchamaṇḍalī means ‘a group or aggregate of five,’ which does not run counter to the sense Fleet
has attached to the word. This does not, however, seem to be the sense intended here, because, in the first place,
the word actually engraved is pañcha-maṇḍalyā which Fleet wrongly corrects into pañcha-maṇḍalyā[m*]; secondly,
idiom requires that we should have pañcha-maṇḍalīṁ praṇipatya instead of pañcha-maṇḍalyāṁ praṇipatya as
Fleet has it, if Āmrakārdava really prostrated himself before the Panch; and, thirdly, the verb
dadāti in line 6 goes with Āryasaṅghāya in line 2 which is in the dative and there is no necessity of
supposing any intermediate body like the Panch, the word standing for which is pañcha-maṇḍalyā[m*], which,
again, is not in the dative but locative. What then could be the meaning of pañcha-maṇḍalyā here? In this connection our attention was drawn many years ago by Rev. Mr. Siddharthe to the word pañcha-patiṭṭhitam which is explained in Childers’ Dictionary as follows: “Setting down or fixing of five things. . . Pañchapatiṭṭhitena vandati, to
salute with the five rests, viz., to prostrate oneself before a superior so completely that the forehead, elbows, waist,
knees, and feet rest on the ground. . .” Pañcha-maṇḍalyā praṇipatya of our text corresponds to this Pāli phrase and
may be taken to mean “having prostrated himself in a group of five (so that his five limbs touched the ground).”
3 Dēśa denotes primarily ‘a country’ and secondarily ‘a kingdom’; so also, rāshṭra and vishaya. The last two
terms again denote a division or sub-division of a kingdom for administrative purposes according to the different
times and the different parts of India where they were used. Here, however, dēśa stands for ‘a country’ as the term
vāstavya following it shows.
4 Mūlya means ‘price, worth, a sum of money given as payment.’ It cannot be equivalent to akshaya-nīvi, as
Fleet takes it; because akshaya-nīvi means ‘a permanent endowment,’ if mūlya at all has that sense. Again, Fleet
translates Maja-Śarabhaṅg-Āmrarāta-rājakula by “Maja, Śarabhaṅga and Āmrarāta of the royal household” which
yields no good sense at all. Rājakula must here be taken in the sense of ‘a palace.” Maja, Śarabhaṅga and
Āmrarāta thus seem to be the names of the palaces which were occupied by Chandragupta II while he was
encamped at Vidiśā during his expedition of conquest.
5 Akshaya-nīvitaḥ may be supplied on the analogy of line 3 of the Sāñchī inscription of the year 131 referred
to on p. 249, note I above.
6 This must refer to the income realised from Īśvaravāsaka after paying off the state revenue. This income
must be equal to the interest on twentyfive dīnāras, as the object served by both was exactly identical.
7 “This is the literal meaning of ratna-gṛiha,” says Fleet. “It seems to denote the Stūpa itself, as the abode of
the three ratnas or ‘jewels or precious things,’ viz., (1) Buddha; (2) Dharma, the Law or Truth; and (3) Saṁgha, the community or congregation.” Fleet, however, forgets that the Buddha was one of the three ratnas and that
consequently ratna-gṛiha can reasonably denote the shrine of the Buddha. In fact, the term ratna was employed to
denote not only the Buddha but also Bōdhisattvas. See, e.g., the passage where the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka explains
......................................................................................................................(Contd. on p. 252)
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