North Indian Inscriptions

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS

vince in Dakkiṇāpatha (Dakshiṇāpatha).¹ The story tells us that Bāvarin sent his sixteen pupils to wait upon the Buddha ; and the route has been described by which they traversed from their settlement in Aśmaka. They first went to Patiṭṭhāna (Pratishṭhāna) of the Mūlaka country, then to Māhishmatī, and so on. It will thus be seen that the Aśmaka country and Bāvarin’s settlement on the Gōdāvarī were to the south of Pratishṭhāna, or Paiṭhaṇ in Aurangabad District, Maharashtra State, the principal town of the Mūlaka province. Dakshiṇāpatha thus, in the Buddha’s time, stretched so far south as to contain not only Mūlaka but also Aśmaka.

        The same appears to be the case with the term Uttarāpatha.² One Buddhist Jātaka speaks of certain horse-dealers as having come from Uttarāpatha to Bārāṇasī or Vārāṇasī.³ Uttarāpatha cannot here signify Northern India, because Vārāṇasī itself is in Northern India. Evidently it denotes a country at least outside and to the north of the Kāśī kingdom whose capital was Vārāṇasī. As the horses of the dealers just referred to are called saindhava, it clearly indicates that they came from the banks of the Sindhu or the Indus. We have seen that according to Manu, the Sarasvatī formed the western boundary of Madhyadēśa. It was thus with reference to the Middle country that the name Uttarāpatha also was devised. Up to the seventh century A.D., we find the term Uttarāpatha used in this sense. Thus, when Prabhākaravardhana, king of Sthāṇvīśvara, sent his son Rājyavardhana to invade the Hūṇa territory in the Himālayas, Bāṇa (c. 625 A.D.), author of the Harshacharita, represents him to have gone to Uttarāpatha.⁴ As the Hūṇa territory has thus been placed in Uttarāpatha, it is clear that Prabhākaravardhana’s kingdom was excluded from it. And as Sthāṇvīśvara, capital or Prabhākaravardhana, is Thanesar and is on this side of the Sarasvatī, his kingdom is naturally presumed to be included in Madhyadēśa, with reference to which alone the Hūṇa territory seems to have been described as being in Uttarāpatha. Similarly, the poet Rājaśēkhara (880-920 A.D.), in his Kāvyamīmāṁsā,⁵ places Uttarāpatha on the other side of Pṛithūdaka, which, we know, is Pehoa in the Karnal District, Haryana, that is, on the western border of the Middle Country. It is therefore clear that the terms Dakshiṇāpatha and Uttarāpatha came into vogue only in regard to Madhyadēśa. It must, however, be borne in mind that although Uttarāpatha in Northern India denoted the country north of Madhyadēśa, in Southern India about the time of Bāṇa the term denoted Northern India. Thus Harshavardhana, Bāṇa’s patron, has been described in South Indian inscriptions as Sovereign of Uttarāpatha which must here signify North India.⁶

        There are many other localities and countries mentioned in the Allahābād pillar inscription, especially in connection with Dakshiṇāpatha. These have been already dealt with above in the Introduction.

TEXT⁷

[Metres: Verses 2, 3, 5 and 8 Sragdharā; verses 4 and 7 Śārdūlavikrīḍita; verse 6 Mandā-krāntā and verse 9 Pṛithvi.]

1 [Yaḥ]⁸ Kulyaiḥ svai . . . . . . . . . . . .ātasa . . . . . . . . . . .
2 ya (?) sya(?) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[|| 1*]
__________________

¹ Carmichael Lectures, 1918, pp. 4-5, 19 and 22.
² Ibid., p. 46.
³ Jātakas, Vol. II, p. 287, line 15.
⁴ Harshacharita ( B.S.P.S. No. LXVI), p. 210.
⁵ G.O.S. No. I, 1934 edition, p. 94, line 9.
⁶ JBBRAS., Vol. XIV, p. 26; Ind. Ant., Vol. VIII, p. 46,. and Vol. IX, p. 127.
⁷ From estampages supplied by the Superintendent, Archaeological Survey of India, Northern Circle.
⁸ The first four lines of this inscription contain the first two of its stanzas. The letters that remain of the first do not suffice to determine what its metre was. But what remains of the second shows that it is in the Srag- dharā metre. [Most probably the metre of the first stanza is also Sragdharā.—Ed.].