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No. 39.)
KALAWAN COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF THE YEAR 134.
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The Kalawān inscription has, as we have seen, shown that the era used in the Kharoshthi inscriptions connected with these events must be the so-called Vikrama era. We can, accordingly, state that Kujūla Kadphises' attack on An-si and conquest of Kao-fu cannot be placed before some time after A. D. 46, because then Gondophernes, who was not the last Parthian king, was still ruling. Less than twenty years later, in the year 122, i.e. A. D. 65, we find a maharaya Gushana, a title which recalls the Hou Han-shu statement about Kujūla Kadphises styling himself Kushāņa King, mentioned in the Panjtar inscription. If this ruler was, as some scholars think, Wima Kadphises, we should have to draw the inference that his father, who was more than eighty years old at his death, was no more alive, and that he had, consequently, achieved his chief result, the victory over the Parthians, when he was & septuagenarian. That is, so far as I can see, an impossibility, and the chronology which the new inscription allows us to draw up seems to clear up the disputed question about the identity of the Kushāņa ruler mentioned in the Panjtar and silver-scroll records. He can only be identified with Kujula Kadphises. And if he was still alive in A. D. 79, Kanishka, the successor, or one of the successors, of his Bon Wima Kadphises, cannot have founded the historical Saka era.
The Kalawan inscription is also of importance for the chronology of Gandhāra art. The sculptures found in the chapel, which cannot be older than A, D. 77, are stated to be of good style, and it is not a priori likely that they are older than the chapel itself. We can, accordingly, in this case approximately date some specimens of good Gandhāra art. If the Loriyan Tangai, Hashtnagar and Skārah Dheri image inscriptions of the years 318, 384 and 399, are referred to the old Saka era and roughly correspond to A. D. 168, 234 and 249 A. D., respectively, we should be able to survey the development of Gandhāra sculpture for more than 150 years. The Mamāna Dheri pedestal of the Kanishka year 89 would then be only slightly older than the Hashtnagar image, because it seems impossible, in view of the chronological result indicated above, to assume an earlier epoch of the Kanishka era than towards A. D. 130.
TEXT. (L. 1). Samvatsaraye 1 100 20 10 4 ajasa bravanasa masasa divase trevise 20111 imena kshunena Chamdrabhi uasia (1. 2) Dhrammasa grahavatisa dhita Bhadravalasa bhaya Chhadabilae sarira praistaveti gahathu- (1. 3) bami sadha bhraduņa Ņardivadhaņeņa grahavatiņa sadha putrehi Samena Saitena cha dhituna cha (1. 4) Dhramae sadha shņushaehi Rajae Idrae ya sadha Jivanamdina Samaputreņa syarieņa ya sa[[ ]vasti- (1.5) vaaņa parigrahe rathanikamo puyaita Barvas(v)atvaņa puyae nivaṇasa pratiae hotu.
TRANSLATION. In the year 134 of Azes, on the twenty-third-23. day of the month Srāvana, at this term the female worshipper (upāsi ka) Chandrabhi, daughter of the householder (griha pati) Dharma, wife of Bhadrapāla, establishes relics in Chhadabila, in the chapel-stūpa, together with her brother, the householder Nandivardhana, with her sons Sama and Sachitta and her daughter Dbarmā, with her daughters-in-law Rajā and Indra, with Jivanandin, the son of Sama, and the teacher, in acceptance of the Sarvāstivādas, having venerated the country-town, for the veneration of all beings; may it be for the obtainment of Nirvana.
That does not, however, preolude that Kábul might already have been associated with the Kusbiņas at An earlier stage, before the attack on the Parthians. Such a previous connection may be reflected in the Kujala-Hermaeus coins and in the notice in the older Han Annals about Kao-fu being one of the five Ta-ha principalities. But the Parthian conquest of Kabul made an end to that state of things.
