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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
scriptions, contained in Sir A. Cunningham's and the present collections, there are ten, recording donations by corporate bodies or families. The remainder give the names of individual donors. If a certain number of mutilated, or according to the facsimiles inexplicable, inscriptions are left out, and if the homonymous donors are considered to be the same persons, we find among them fifty-four monks and thirty-seven nung, as well as ninety-one males and forty-five or forty-seven females, who probably were lay members of the Buddhist sect.
On the other hand, it is not improbable that two persons, bearing slightly different names, may be identical. Thus the monk Jonaka, I, O. 152, may be the same as the monk Jonhaka, I, 75.
Among the corporate bodies making donations, there are, according to the explana. tions given below, two villages, Vejaja I, 17, and Padukulikà II, 1. Sir A. Cun. ningham (Bhilsa Topes, p. 240 and p. 280) takes in both cases gráma as a personal name or as a part of such. But gráma is not used in such a manner, and the translation of Vejajasa gámasa dánam by “Gift of Vejajjagrama," is grammatically inadmissible, as that could only be Vejajagámasa dánań. On the other hand, the form of the two names agrees well with the suggestion that they denote villages, for, PâdukulikA corresponds to Pandukulika, 'the little dwelling,' or the little sanctuary of Pandu, ie. the Naga Paņdu, and the word Vejaja closely agrees in its ending with the terminations aj, ej, and ij, which occur in hundreds of Indian village names as corruptions of the affixes aya, eya and iya". Its first part corresponds to Sanskrit vaidya, which possibly may be an abbreviation of Vaidyanátha, Pious donations, made by villages or towns, do not occur frequently in the inscriptions", and those recorded on the Sanchi Ståpas possess a particular interest for, though, perhaps, they do not prove that all the inhabitants of Vejaja and Padukulikå were Upåsakas of the Buddhist Sangha, they yet indicate that their most influential men, the members of the village Panch, belonged to the Bauddha sect, and that Buddhism had gained a footing among the agricultural population of Malvå. Of equal interest is the mention of a Bodhagothi, in I, 25, 26. The compound corresponds to Bauddhagosthi. A goshthi is a committee of trustees in charge of a temple or of a charitable foundation. The inscriptions teach us, therefore, that the village of Dharmavardhana possessed a Bauddha shrine, or perhaps a Vihara, which was managed by such a committee. The fact that Goshthis existed in the third century B.C. is of some importance. The term gotht occurs also in I, 51, where it is preceded by the word Barulamisáya or Barulamisána. I am unable to explain the latter term. The collective gift of the Vedisaká dámtakárá, or workers in ivory of Vedis a. I, O. 189, probably indicates that these artisans formed a guild, or frent, such as the Nasik inscriptions mention repeatedly.
Among the remaining inscriptions of this class, which mention the Vakiliyas of Ujjain, I, 27, O. 21, all the relatives of the venerable Nagila, I, 84, and the Upåsikas
# This is, of course, by no means certain, because in some cases persons bearing the same names are clearly distinct. Thus Asradera, the mother of Bahadata (1, 30), is certainly not the same person as Asyadeve, the mother of Bamiks (I, C. 88), nor the nun Isidata of Madhuvana (I, C. 132), the same as the nun Isidata of Kurana.
* The number of the Upsikâs is uncertain, because possibly the Odi, mentioned I, 82, may be identical with the nun OdI, II, 11, and because the interpretation of I, 21 is uncertain.
The map of Gujarat furnishes 6. g. Adalaj, Arnej, Kamlej, Kamrej, Pariyaj, Palej, Prantij, Sarkhej. Among these Kamrej (also Kamlej), east of Barat, was called in Sanskrit Karmaneya or Kamaniya (Indias Antiquary, vol. XVII, p. 198).
# Vaidya Curi M the name of village in the Nepal inscriptions; Ind. Ant. vol. IX. p. 176. # The Bharhut inscription No. 16 mentions a gift of the town of Karahakata (Barbakata-nigames).
