________________ MATHURA INSCRIPTIONS composed them or to have written them. The Yatis in the first and second centuries no doubt, just as now, for their sermons and the exposition of their scriptures, used the vernacular of the day, and their scriptures were certainly written in Prakrt. It was a matter of course that their attempts to write in Sanskrit were not very successful. This theory receives the strongest support from the fact that the character and the number of the corruptions vary almost in every document, and from various single sentences, such as vacakasya aryya--Baladinasya sshyo aryya--Matridinah tasya nervoarttana, which latter reads like a piece from a stupid schoolboy's exercise." I As to the general importance of the Mathura inscriptions in connection with the history of Jainism in North India there can be no denying the fact that they afford most unequivocal evidence of the flourishing state of the Jaina religion during the period of Indo-Scythian rule, both before and after the Christian era. They tell us about a widespread and firmly established Jaina community, strongly supported by pious lay-devotees, and very zealous in the consecration and worship of images and shrines dedicated to Mahavira and his predecessors After the Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela the Kankali mound at Mathura has now given us the most complete and satisfactory testimony that the Jaina religion, even before the beginning of the Christian era, must have been in a condition almost as rich and flourishing as that of Buddha. 1 Buhler, op cit, p 377
