Epigraphia Indica Vol 20

SR No.: 032574
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hirananda Shastri
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India
Publication Year: 1929
Total Pages: 188
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 40 MB

Page 21

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
(VOL. XX.
under the name of Kulahaka. The other, if we may judge from its appellation, must have been & convent founded either by a Singhalese or, more probably, for the accommodation of Singhalese monks. This "Ceylonese Convent" appears to have contained & shrine with & Bodhi-tree (Bodhi-rukha-päsüdla Skt. Bodhi-vriksha-prāsāda) which is, indeed, & necessary adjunct of the Buddhist monasteries of Ceylon up to the present day. Not only the mention of a Sihala-vihāra, but also the dedication of a chetiya-ghara to the theriyas of " fraternities" of Tambapaṁņi point to relations which must have existed between the Buddhist community of Dhañña kata ka and their co-religionists in the Isle of Ceylon. The existence of such relations can be easily accounted for from the sca-borne trade which was carried on between the ports of the Island and Kantakasela, the great emporium on the right bank of the Kistna river.
This trade was, no doubt, alan largely responsible for the flourishing state of Buddhism in this part of India. The devotees of the Good law were largely recruited from the commercial classes and it was their wealth which enabled not only the merchants themselves, but also their royal masters, to raise monuments of such magnificence as the great stūpa of Amarāvati. Both Amaravati and Nagarjunikonda are situated on the right bank of the Kistna, the former being situated at a distance of some 60 miles from the inouth of the river. Nāgārjunikonda lies considerably higher up the river, the distance between this place and Amaravati being another 60 miles as the crow flies, but considerably longer by river. On the opposite side of the river we have Jaggayyapeta, containing another monument of the reign of the Ikhākus. The village of Allura in the Nandigama taluk of the Kistna district has yielded a fragmentary Prakrit inscription, referred to above, which appears to record a donation to a Buddhist monastery. At the village of Gummadiduru in the Kistna district the remains of a large stupa, adorned with marble reliefs in the Amarāvati style, have recently come to light together with the remnants of monastic buildings. All these monuments attest to the piety and the wealth of the Buddhist community in these parts during the second anıl third centuries of our era: In the days of Hiuen Tsiang the monasteries were mostly deserted and ruined. The collapse of Buddhism on the lower Kistna may have had various causes ; besides the general wane of that religion all over India, there may have been economic agents at work, like the decline of the sea-borne trade with the West, wbich had caused vast quantities of Roman gold to pour into the Peninsula. There was also the conquest of Southern India by the Gupta Emperor Samudragupta and the rise of powerful dynasties devotor! to Brahmanism like the Pallava in the South and the Chalukya in the West.
In connection with Buddhism attention must be drawn to the mention of sect-names in the Nāgārjunikonda inscriptions. In Nos. 1, line 10 and E, line 2, the dedication is stated to be made for the benefit or acceptance of the Aparamahāvinaseliyas. In both cases the sign for i over the fifth akshara is quite distinct so that we are not allowed to read -makāvana-, a8 was done by Drs. Burgess and Hultzsch in the case of an Amarāvati inscription. The latter was inclined to associate the name with the Mahāvanaśālā at Vasili, well-known from the Buddha legend, The Amarāvati inscription in question, however, as certainly Muhāvinaseliyānant: At the end of the fragmentary Prakrit inscription from Allūru we read : ayirāna[m] Puvaseli. yläjna[rn] nigāyasa (Skt. āryānā Purvalailiyānāṁ nikäynsya).
The Pali chronicles of Ceylon ma ke mention of the Publa and the Apara-selikas, the two sub-divisions of the Mahasanghikas. The latter of those two expressions is perhaps an abbreviated form of the Averamahāvinaseliyas in our inscriptions. Can it be that the two sects,
Burgess, Amaravati, p. 105, No. 49; and, Hultzach, 2. D. 4. G., Vol XXXVII, pp. 580 f., and XL p. 314.
* Mahäva shsa, V, 12, and Dipava thua, V. 64