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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA in the bell inscription. Fourthly, the internal evidence of our Inscription No.1 seems to go against Johnston’s dating if his own views on the date and evidence of the Mrohaung inscription[1] of Ānandachandra are taken into consideration. On palaeographical grounds and other considerations, Johnston places Ānandachandra’s epigraph ‘in the first half of the eighth century’ and more precisely to a date not ‘much later than A.D. 700’. Now, as will be shown below, our inscription was engraved during the reign of king Nītichandra who ascended the throne, according to the epigraph of Ānandachandra, 209 years before the incision of the latter’s record. This would place Nītichandra’s accession ‘not much later than’ 491 A.D. As a matter of fact, Johnston’s dating of Ānandachandra’s inscription was influenced by his views that the coins of Dēvachandra (who ended his rule 266 years before Ānandachandra’s accession) and Dharmavijaya (who began to rule 55 years before Ānandachandra) should be assigned on palaeographic grounds to the first half of the fifth and seventh centuries respectively. Our Inscription No. 1 as the Vēsālī bell inscription may be actually assigned on palaeographical grounds to the first half of the sixth century A.D. In our opinion, their characters may have descended from a variety slightly earlier than the Faridpur plates of Dharmāditya and Gōpachandra.
We have referred above to an amount of local development in the palaeography of the inscriptions under study. In Inscription No. 1, the letter h is written with a vertical line and a curve opening upwards or towards the right and joining the vertical towards the left not at the latter’s bottom but slightly or considerably above it. This form of h is not noticed in East Indian inscriptions, in which the letter has its bottom curved towards the left. A vertical similar to that of h is sometimes noticed in ch as well (cf. line 2). Sometimes the form of m (cf. mahāº in line 2) appears to be more cursive than noticed in the East Indian records. Inscription No. 2 exhibits the same type of h. Medial ā in this inscription is in many cases indicated by a curve opened towards the right and placed at the head of the consonant.[2] The vowel mark in jā in bhūbhujā (line 1) is also of this type, though this form of the letter is not found in Indian epigraphs. In several cases, medial ā sign ends in an inward bend almost making a loop. This resembles medial ī as used in some Indian inscriptions as well as in the modern Tamil alphabet. The form of the letter ṇ in svārthēṇa in line 1 (cf. also ºrāgēṇa in the same line) exhibits a cursive form more developed than that found in Inscription No. 1. Generally, however, the palaeography of the present record resembles that of the other epigraph and appears to be only a few decades later than that of the latter. This is supported by the internal evidence of Inscription No. 2 which was incised during the reign of king Vīrachandra, the successor of Nītichandra of Inscription No. 1 according to Ānandachandra’s epigraph referred to above although it quotes the name slightly differently. This record may be palaeographically assigned to a date about the last quarter of the sixth century. Nītichandra is stated to have ruled for 55 years and his successor, called Vīryachandra in Ānandachandra’s inscription but Vīrachandra on his coins, for 3 years only. The palaeography of the two records appears to suggest that Inscription No. 1 was engraved fairly early in Nītichandra’s reign. It is interesting to note that the second epigraph writes Buddha with b while in Eastern India b was generally written by the sign for v from the seventh century A. D. Inscription No. 3 exhibits the tripartite form of y as in the other two records as well as the same type of h. That, however, it was somewhat later than Inscriptions Nos. 1-2 seems to be suggested by the later daṇḍa-like medial ā sign and the slightly more developed sign of medial u (cf. also medial ū) resembling subscript y and rising to the level of the top mātrā of the consonant to its right. A local development seems to be exhibited by the serif at the top of these signs for medial u and ū. _____________________________________________
[1] Op. cit., pp. 365 ff.; cf. ARASI, 1925-26, pp. 146-48.
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