South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

improbable. Secondly, what could be the use of specifying so accurately, as is done in the two cases, the village in which those trees would have been alienated, if the donees were only concerned with the proceeds of the sale ? The fact itself, that the king’s son-in-law should have sold a few cocoanut trees in order to provide himself with funds for his private charities, is the more unlikely as gifts in kind are the more usual ones ; or, if money is intended, it is a consolidated investment (see N. 12), a foundation of a perpetual rent. We see below that the same donor buys a field in order to secure food for the monks, but not the reverse. If we follow Bühler, we must admit, in spite of the general parallelism of the two phrases, that the number of trees would have been noted in our case, while in N. 12 the sum of money alone would be stated, as representing the cocoanut trees (nâligerâna), the number of which would be undefined. In N. 12, if only we read mûlaṁ for mûla, we may well construe the word in apposition to sahasâni. Such an expedient is here out of the question, and this is a very strong reason for taking in N. 12 mulasahasâni as a compound. This must be the spontaneous impression of every unprejudiced reader ; even here, where the compound is certain, its resolution into a first member ending with mûla and being in apposition to sahasra (which would be excluded by the compound mulasahasâni in N. 12) is, although possible, certainly too remote to appear probable at first sight. Lastly, in N. 12, if a gift of 8,000 kârshâpaṇas were really intended, it is not easy to see why it should have been consigned to the third place, without any details regarding the mode of foundation while the inferior gift of 3,000 kârshâpaṇas, previously mentioned, is treated quite differently. Form all these facts I conclude that Bhagwanlal is certainly right, and that we have here to do with a gift of 32,000 cocoanut trees, and in N. 12 with one of 8,000, the first at the village of Nânaṁgola, and the second at the village of Chikhalapadra. The only difficulty lies in the use of mûla, which seems to imply ‘ roots of cocoanut trees ’ instead of simply ‘ cocoanut trees.’ Such an idiom is surely not more puzzling than if, in French, we reckon trees by ‘ pieds ’ and say 32,000 ‘ pieds de cocotiers.’

The locatives Govardhane Triraśmishu parvateshu have been generally construed in immediate connection with kâritaṁ and dharmâtmanâ, which was considered as an independent epithet, meaning ‘ religious, charitable,’ and would have been introduced here into the midst of the sentence without any special signification. The general plan of the construction does not seem, to favour such an interpretation. The words beginning with Govardhane and ending with dharmâtmanâ are exactly symmetrical with the analogous groups which precede this one. These groups make up the bulk of our epigraph and end uniformly with a laudatory epithet, preceded by such determinatives as it requires. It seems difficult to admit that the analogy created by such a concatenation of instances should be disturbed in this only case, and that the strict correspondence which is warranted by the whole structure should here be fallacious. Besides it would be the only case where to the mention of the mountains in which the cave was excavated would be added the name of the neighbouring town of Gôvardhana, which is perfectly superfluous in this place,─ the only one too where, in order to commemorate, on the site itself, the name of the hill in which it has been dug, the plural would be used. These two particularities rather suggest the idea of some fact which is more general, less strictly localized, and concerning not the cave itself, but the region as a whole. I must add that all the donations previously mentioned are bestowed without any exception on Brâhmaṇs or Brâhmaṇ institutions, while the gift which our epigraph records, and which this part of the sentence introduces, is, on the contrary made in favour of Buddhist monks. I have previously, in connection with the term dhaṁma-Yavana in K. 10, expressed the idea that dhaṁma has to be taken in the sense of ‘ Buddhist religion,’ and the same is, I believe, the case here as well. This is why I understand the passage to mean ‘ imbued at Govardhana in the Triraśmi hills with (true) religion.’ I dare not decide if this phrase implies an express conversion to Buddhism, or only puts a first gift in favour of Buddhism in contrast with the previous grants which were inspired by Brâhmaṇical feelings. I do not think the wording allows us to settle this shade of meaning. On the strength of this