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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA with ºtrasya Vāsudevasya[1] Saṁ. The aksharas immediately preceding trasya, now lost, must have been devapu, Devaputra being a characteristic epithet of the Kushāṇa emperors of Kaṇishka’s house[2], to which king Vāsudeva, mentioned in the passage, is known to have belonged. It is possible to think that Devaputrasya in the line was preceded by the expression Mahārājasya. In the inscriptions of the Kushāṇa rulers of Kaṇishka’s house, the word Devaputra is often preceded by Mahārāja and in some cases by Māhārāja Rājātirāja.[3] The akshara Saṁ, which is a contraction of the word saṁvatsare, is followed by the symbol for 60 and a unit sign which is partially damaged. This imperfectly preserved figure, however, looks more like 4 or 7 than any other numeral. Thus the inscription under study was engraved in the year 64 or 67 of the Kaṇishka era during the reign of the Kushāṇa emperor Vāsudeva. This is a very important information, supplied for the first time by the present record, as so long the earliest epigraph of Vāsudēva’s reign was known to be the year 74[4] of the era in question, corresponding to 152 A. D. in the opinion of most scholars. Since the latest known date of Huvishka’s reign is the year 60[5] of the same era, the intervening period between the last known date of that king and the earliest known date of Vāsudēva had so far to be reckoned as no less than fourteen years. The present inscription reduces this period to four or seven years only. The number 64 or 67 in the date of the inscription in line 1 is followed by varsh[a]-māse dviti 2 divasi...(Sanskrit varshā-māse dvitīye 2 divase....), the number of the day in the month being possibly incised at the beginning of the next line (line 2) and now lost. The actual date of the inscription is therefore some day in the second month of the rainy season in the year 64 or 67 of the Kaṇishka era. As the season in question followed the fullmoon day of the month of Āshāḍha and lasted for four month till the fullmoon of Kārttika, the second month of it corresponded to the lunar (Pūrṇimānta) month of Bhādra (August-September).[6] The actual date of our inscription was therefore a day of Bhādra in 142 or 145 A. D.
The object of the inscription is recorded in the following lines (lines 2-5), the beginning of all of which, as noticed above, is broken away. Line 2 reads : ºnaṁ sa[rva]sha yatr=opanāna p[ū]jārtha, although it is difficult to determine whether an akshara is lost at the end of it. In Sanskrit, the passage would be : ºnāṁ sarveshāṁ yatr=otpannānāṁ pūjārtham. The epithet upana (Sanskrit utpanna), i.e. ‘ born ’, seems to suggest that naṁ at the beginning of the line is the concluding part of an expression like satvāaṁ (Sanskrit sattvānām), i.e. ‘ of the creatures [that were born] ’. Line 3 reads : ºna parigrahā[ya*] achariyana Mahāsaghi[kā] with possibly the akshara naṁ lost at the end. In Sanskrit, the passage would be : ºnāṁ parigrahāya āchāryāṇāṁ Mahāsāṅghikānām. Barring na(=nām) at the beginning of the line, the passage means : ‘ for the acceptance of the teachers of the Mahāsāṅghika community’.[7] The arrangement of words in this part of the record would suggest that na at the beginning of line 3 is the remnant of a word in the sixth case-ending plural, which should have to be read with pūjārtha at the end of the previous line. It may be conjectured that the complete passage read something like pūjārtha [sarva-Buddhā]na (Sanskrit pūjārthaṁ sarva-Buddhānām), ‘for the adoration of all the Buddhas’.[8] Consequently it would appear that a lost word at the beginning of line 2, to be read along with the _______________________________________________
[1] Macron over c and o has not been used in this article.
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