Old Bramhi Inscriptions In Udaygiri And Khandagiri

SR No.: 020516
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Benimadhab Barua
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1929
Total Pages: 354
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 230

202
OLD BRAHMI INSCRIPTIONS
as concerning the ranges of Khāravela's military expeditions and conquests. It will be our interest also to indicate the regions where the influence of his military powers was felt and openly acknowledged. As regards all these points, we are to attempt to draw our corclusions from the following data that may be gathered from the Hāthi-Gumphā inscription and other sources, epigraphic and literary, which are now within our reach.
The old Brāhmi inscriptions are all found attached as labels to the caves or the Udayagiri and Khandagiri bills which are situated about five or six miles north-west of Bhuvaneswar and at a distance of a few miles from the village of Dhauli-Tosali that lies about seven miles south of Bhuvaneswar. That is to say, our old Brahmi inscriptions and the Dhauli copy of Asoka's Rock Edicts and Separate Rock Edicts are found engraved at a distance of a few miles on the rocks or hills that are included in the modern Puri District of Orissa.
It is clearly implied in the edicts of Asoka, especially in the two copies of his two Separate Rock Edicts, that his Kalinga province comprised two political divisions, the first or presidency division of which the official headquarters was Tosali-Dhauli, and the second division of which the official headquarters was Samāpā, and that adjoining thereto were the outlying unconquered tracts ("mtā avijitā). The names of the two divisions of Asoka's Kalinga province are not mentioned in his edicts. But we learn from the Gandavyūha account of the wanderings of a Buddhist seeker of truth in South India that Sarvagrāma was a locality in Toşala, while Toşala, undoubtedly a city corresponding to Asoka's Tosali, was located in Amitatoşala, and that beyond Amitatoşala was Pșthurāştra, which has been identified with Pithudaga-Pithuda in Khāravela's inscriptions, Pihumda in the Jaina Uttaradhyayana-Sūtra and pitundra in Ptolemy's work on Geography. It may be easily infer this that Asoka's Tosali-Toşala was the chief town of a division of the Ssame name, Amitatoşala, Tosali or Toşala. Here the crux is--does the Hāthi-Gumphā inscription offer us any information about the existence of a political division of Kalioga by the name of Amitatogala, Tosali or Toşala? Whether it does or not depends solely on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the identification of Tanasuliya or Tanasuli with Tosali.
It is evident from the record of Khāravela's fifth regnal year that Kalimga-nagara, the capital of Kbāravela's kingdom of Kalinga, was not far from the Tanasuliya or Țanasuli road wherefrom a canal opened out by King