Epigraphia Indica Vol 33

SR No.: 032587
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: D C Sircar
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India
Publication Year: 1959
Total Pages: 514
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 29 MB

Page 96

No, 8-BARHUT INSCRIPTIONS IN ALLAHABAD MUSEUM
(1 Plate) · D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND
(Received on 31.1.1958) Cunningham discovered the remains of the ancient Buddhist Stüpa at Barhut (also spelt Bharhut and Bharaut) in the former Nagaud State, of late merged in Madhya Pradesh, in 1873. The best and the most valuable of the sculptured remains' were purchased by him for the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and are now exhibited in the Archaeological Section of that Museum. The inscriptions incised on the stones pertaining to the said collection were studied by Cunningham, Hoernle, Hultzsch' and Lüders as well as by Barua and Sinha. Some more relics of the same religious establishment, probably those rejected by Cunningham, were lying in & godown of the rulers of the Nagaudh State. These were secured some years ago by Pandit Vrij Mohan Vyas for the Municipal Museum at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. There are altogether seven inscriptions in the Barhut collection of the Allahabad Museum. An unsatisfactory impression of one of these epigraphs reached me more than ten years ago and I published it in the Journal of the Royal Asiatio Society of Bengal, Letters, Vol. XIV, 1948, pp. 113-14 ; but the impression was too flimsy for reproduction. About the end of 1957 I visited the Allahabad Museum and Dr. S. C. Kala, Curator of the Museum, kindly allowed me to copy all the inscriptions of the Barhut collection. The epigraphs are published in the following pages.
Like most of the published inscriptions from Barhut, the records under study are small epigraphs in one or two lines. The characters belong to the Brahmi alphabet of about the second century B. C. The language of the inscriptions is Prakrit.
No. 1 The pillar bearing the inscription in one line near the representation of an acrobatic scene bears the Museum number Ac/2915. The line is 7 inches in length and individual aksharas are about inch high. The letters are smaller in size in the present upigraph than in any other in the Barhut collection in the Allahabad Museum. This inscription was published by me without illustration in the pages of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, referred to above. But, on a careful examination of the record, it is now found that there are some errors in the observations on the epigraph contained in my article.
then read the inscription as follows:
Pusadataye? nāgarikāye bhikhuniye [sa].......... It was suggested that the epigraph, supposed to be fragmerbary, recorda the gift of a pillar or rail by the nun Pushyadattă of the city where the ancient Stupa wus situated. I also suggested that Pushyadattā of this inscription is identical with the nun of that name mentioned in another Barhut inscription read by Barua and Sinha as :
Pusadatāye nagarikaye bhichhuniye Sakāya thabho dānan. 1 See his Stupa of Bharhut, 1879.
Ind. Ant., Vol. X, pp. 118 ff., 255 ff.; Vol. XI, pp. 25 ff. Cf. Anderson, Catalogue and Handbook of the Archaeological Collection in the Indian Museum, 1883.
*ZDYG, Vol. XL, pp. 58 ff.; Ind. Ant., Vol. XXI, pp. 225 ff. • List of Brāhmi Inscriptions, above, Vol. X, Appendix, No. 687-903.
Barhut Inscriptions, 1926. • See S.C. Kala, Bharhut Vedika, p. 30, No. 1. ? Macron over e and o has not been used in the article.
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