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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
employed. The palæography of the inscription thus may be regarded as showing the characteristics of a period between the second and the fourth centuries and may therefore be roughly
assigned to the third century A. C. although it does not appear to be earlier than the middle
of that century. The characters of the present epigraph resemble those of the Shōrkōṭ (Jhang
District, Punjab) inscription[1], assigned to 403 A. C., but exhibit earlier traits especially in the
formation of the medial vowel-marks. The most interesting fact about the palæography of
the present inscription in Brāhmī characters is that it was discovered in an area where Kharōshṭhī
was the popular script. The popularity of Kharōshṭhī in the Peshawar-Hazara region as late at
least as the third century A. C. is indicated by inscriptions and accepted by scholars.[2] The discovery
of the epigraph under study has therefore some bearing on the gradual ousting of Kharōshṭhī by
Brāhmī in the area about the North-West Frontier Province. Again the language of the Kharōshṭhī inscriptions discovered in this region is Prakrit while the present record is couched in
Sanskrit. We know that Prakrit was originally the language of Indian records but that it was
ousted by Sanskrit from the Brāhmī inscriptions of Northern India by the third century and
from South Indian records about a century later. The inscription under study is interesting from
this point of view also.
The inscription begins with the date Sa 25 M[ā]rgaśira-di pratha, i.e., Saṁvatsarē
pañchaviṁśē Mārgaśira-dinē prathamē. Thus the record was incised on the first day of
the month of Mārgaśira or Mārgaśīrsha in the year 25 of the regnal reckoning of a ruler. The
object of the inscription is recorded in the following passage which reads kāritō=ya[ṁ*] Kumāra-sthānaṁ, i.e., kāritam=idaṁ Kumāra-sthānam, “ this Kumāra-sthāna has been made (i.e., constructed) ”. As regards the mistake kāritaḥ for kāritam, it may be pointed out that the use of
nominative singular for accusative singular is sometimes noticed in the Prakrit records from the
North-West Frontier Province and has been regarded as a dialectic peculiarity of the area in
question.[3] The expression Kumāra-sthāna appears to mean ‘ a temple of the god Kumāra ’.
The inscribed stone thus originally belonged to the structure referred to in this passage. Kumāra
is regarded as another name of the god Skanda, also called Viśākha and Mahāsēna, But
Patañjali’s Mahābhāshya[4] mentions the images of the gods Śiva, Skanda and Viśākha, while
certain coins of the Kushāṇa king Huvishka bear representations of three gods called in the
legend by the names Skando (Skanda), Komaro (Kumāra) and Bizago (Viśākha) or of four gods
named in the legend as Skando, Maaseno (Mahāsēna), Komaro and Bizago.[5] The facts show not
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[1] Ibid., Vol. XVI, pp. 15 ff. and Plate.
[2] G. H. Ojha, Prāchīna-lipi-mālā (The Palæography of India), p. 37 ; Bühler, Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXIII
(Appendix), p. 18. Sten Konow assigns the latest known Kharōshṭhī inscriptions, found in India, to the fourth
or fifth century A. C. (Corp. Ins. Ind., Vol. II, Part i, p. xiii). He reads the dates in some records as the years
318, 359, 384 and 399 and refers them to an old Śaka era starting from 84-83 B.C. (ibid., p. xci). Cf. also the
inscriptions bearing dates in the years 303 (above, Vol. XXIV, pp. 8 ff.) and 359 (ibid., Vol. XIX, pp. 203 ff.).
But even if the old Scytho-Parthian era is identified with the Vikrama Saṁvat of 58 B.C. (cf. The Age of Imperial
Unity, pp. 125, note ; 144, note), the latest date in Konow’s list (year 399) would correspond to 343 A. C. It
is also not very easy to be definite about the era. Lüders in the Āchārya-pushpāñjali Volume (D.R. Bhandarkar
Volume), pp. 281 ff., refers dates in the years 270 and 292 (or 299) found in two early Brāhmī inscriptions from
Mathurā to the Parthian era of 248 B.C., although the dates of the Kharōshṭhī inscriptions cited above cannot
be assigned to that era. A few Kharōshṭhi records from Taxila have been assigned to the fifth century
(Marshall, Taxila, Vol. I, pp. 374-76).
[3] Above, Vol. XXIV, p. 9.
[4] See under Pāṇin, V. 3, 99 ; Kielhorn’s edition, Vol. II, p. 429.
[5] See R. B. Whitehead, Catalogue of Coins in the Punjab Museum, Lahore, Vol. I, p. 207 ; R. G. Bhandarkar,
Vaishṇavism, Śaivism and Minor Religious Systems, pp. 214-15 ; D. R. Bhandarkar, Ancient Indian Numismatics,
pp. 22-23. For two early images of the god Skanda found in the ancient Gandhāra country in the present Rawalpindi-Peshawar region, see IHQ. Vol. XXX, pp. 81 ff. The Skanda cult was very popular with such north-western tribes as the Yaudhēyas (cf. Allan, Catalogue of the Coins of Ancient India, pp. 270 ff.).
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