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No. 28.]
SO-CALLED TAKHT-I-BAHI INSCRIPTION OF THE YEAR 103.
of the name Aya=Axes, characterizing the year as belonging to an éra established by Azes. In my edition of that inscription I have mentioned the reasons which have been urged by various scholars against this interpretation, and so far as I can see they are still as cogent as they were ten years ago. If ayasa were the name of a king, the inscription would necessarily fall within his reign. The absence of every title is, however, so extraordinary that it is almost impossible that the word can be the name of a ruler. Professor Rapson, it is true, asks us to remember "that the inscription belongs to a people that knew not Azes. His family had been deposed and deprived of all royal attributes. The throne of Takshasila had passed from the Sukas and Pahlavas to the Kushanas. Azes could scarcely have been furnished with his wonted title, 'Great King of Kings', in this inscription, without prejudice to the house then actually reigning." Are we to believe, then, that the people who did not know Azes still used his name in connexion with the era current in the district?
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There is another reason which, in my opinion, makes it impossible to ascribe the establishment of the era to Azes: that theory makes it necessary to separate one of the Kharoshṭhi inscriptions, the Taxila plate of Patika, which is dated in the same way as the other epigraphs, from the rest and construct a special era for it. That has also, as is well known, been done by several scholars. Sir John Marshall has, consistently with his interpretation of the Taxila silver scroll, explained the words maharayasa maham tasa Mogasa in the Taxila plate as indicating the ruler who established the era used in the record. Professor Rapson thinks that this era "may possibly mark the establishment of the new kingdom in Seistan, after its incorporation into the Parthian empire by Mithradates I c. 150 B.C. If so, the date of the inscription would be c. 72 B.C., a year which may well have fallen in the reign of Maues." He further shows that the theory according to which Mithradates I conquered NorthWestern India is based on a misunderstanding of a statement of Orosius and goes on to remark: "The invasion of India must be ascribed not to the Parthian emperors, but to their former feudatories in eastern Iran; not to the reign of Mithradates I, but to a period after the reign of Mithradates II (i.e., after 88 B.C.), when the power of Parthia had declined and kingdoms once subordinate had become independent." M. Foucher holds a similar view, but seems inclined to refer the date of the Taxila plate to the Parthian era of 248 B.C., supposing the figure for hundred to have been suppressed, so that 78 would stand for 178 and correspond to 70 B.C.
"Just as much as the use of
I cannot accept any of these theories: Sir John's not because a proper name in the genitive in connexion with the date in ancient records invariably denotes the ruler in whose reign the inscription was executed, and the other ones because I do not think that we have any indication of the use of foreign eras in India in ancient times, at least not in private documents, and most Kharoshṭht inscriptions are of that nature. I quite agree with M. Foucher, who discusses the supposed use of the Seleukidan era in some Kharoshṭhi epigraphs and, after mentioning the well-known dated coin of Platon, goes on to say: the Greek reckoning seems to us to be on its place on an essentially official and governmental piece like the Platon coin, just as difficult would it seem to us to justify it in the case of a private ex-voto, emanating from a simple indigenous donator." Patika can hardly be supposed to have used an old era belonging to the dynasty from which the invaders of India, the ancestors of his own suzerain, had made themselves independent. Even if we were to admit the possibility of omitted hundreds in these dates, what I do not think we are justified to do, the only natural inference from the general state of things in the Indian borderlands in the first
1 Ep. Ind., XIV, pp. 286 f. 21.c. p. 582. L'art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhara II, p. 488.
sl.c. pp. 568 ff. 490.
2.c. p.
