North Indian Inscriptions

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS

No. 18: PLATE XVIII

MATHURA IMAGE INSCRIPTION OF KUMARAGUPTA I:
THE YEAR 107

       This inscription was first brought to notice by G. Bühler in 1894 in the Ep. Ind., Vol. II, pp. 210-11, No. xxxix, where he published his reading and translation of the text, accompanied by a lithograph (ibid., Plate facing p. 209) based upon estampages supplied by A. Führer.

       The inscription is incised on the base of a large sitting Jina, measuring 3' 8" by 2' 7",¹ unearthed by Fürhrer during his excavations from November 1890 to March 1891 in the Kaṅkālī Ṭīlā at Mathurā, the chief town of the Mathura District, Uttar Pradesh. The image is now in the Provinical Museum at Lucknow.

       The writing covers a space of about 2' 5-½" broad by 1-½" high. It is well preserved with the exception that two or three letters are destroyed in the first line in two places.The average size of the letters is ¾". The characters, on the whole, belong to the western variety of the Gupta alphabet. Those representing h, s and l are decidedly and uniformly of the western type, m alone being of the eastern variety. If we compare this record with No. 6, which also was found at Mathurā, we find that some of the characteristics of the Kushāṇa period which the latter displays are to be seen also in this record. Thus, the letters j, p and ō of this inscription still preserve flat and angular bases, m alone developing a curve. The tops of g and ś, which in No. 6 manifest this characteristic have, however, lost it in our record. The only other point in regard to the palaeography of this epigraph that is worthy of note, is that the characters include in line 1, forms of the numeral symbols for 7, 20 and 100. The language is mixed Dialect or Gāthā Dialect² as it was known to the Indians, and agrees completely with that of the Jaina inscriptions exhumed along with this by Führer in Mathurā and published by Bühler in the Ep. Ind., Vol. I, pp. 381 ff., and 395 ff.; Vol. II, pp. 199 ff. In respect of orthography we have to note (1) that t is doubled in conjunction with a following r, e, g., in Guhamittra⁰, line 2 and (2) that y, v and th are doubled with a preceding r, e.g, in pū[rv][yāṁ], line 1 and prārt[thā]rikasya, line 2.

       The inscription refers itself to the reign of the Paramabhaṭṭāraka Mahārājādhirāja Kumāragupta, i.e., Kumāragupta 1 of the Imperial Gupta dynasty. Its date, in numerical symbols, is one hundred and seven, on the twentieth day of the intercalary month Śrāvaṇa. It, thus, corresponds to 426-27 A.D., when alone Śrāvaṇa was an additional month. It further shows that the Gupta year 107 of this record was an expired one. It is a Jaina inscription; and the object of it is to record the putting up of the image of a Jina by Śāmāḍhyā who was the daughter of Bhaṭṭibhava and wife Guhamitra Pālita who was a Prārthārika, apparently a lapidary. We are further told that the benefaction was made in accordance with the behest of Dattilāchārya who pertained to the Vidyādharī-śākhā of the Kōṭṭiya-gana. Both the Gaṇa and the Śākhā, have been mentioned in the Sthavirāvali of the Kalpasutra.³
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¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. II, p. 210, note 25.
² It “represents the spoken language, if not the vernacular, of the śishṭa people from the first century B.C. to the third century A.D., when, owing to the increasing supremacy of Brahmanism, Sanskrit was being largely studied even by non-Brahmanical sects but Pāli as a literary vehicle was not yet extinct” (D.R.Bhandarkar’s Asoka, 2nd edition, p.212, note 1).
³ SBE., Vol. XXII, p. 292.