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No. 35.]
KASYAPA MAGE INSCRIPTION FROM SILAO.
No. 35.-KASYAPA IMAGE INSCRIPTION FROM SILAO.
By B. CH. CHHABRA, M.A., M.O.L., PH.D. (LUGD.), OOTACAMUND. It was early in the year 1935 that the late Babu Puran Chand Nahar of Calcutta, a wellknown Jain antiquarian, kindly placed at my disposal a couple of inked estampages of the subjoined inscription for decipherment and publication. He informed me that the inscription appears on & stone pedestal which is in the possession of Babu Bhagwan Das of Silao' in the Bihar subdivision of the Patna District. This gentleman, I understand, owns & collection of antiquities. He could not tell the exact provenance of the present piece, as the collection had existed in the family from before his time and is apparently not properly enlisted. Considering, however, that Silao is situated between the famous archæological sites of Nalanda and Rajagriha, it is probable that the find hailed from one of these two places. But, as will be shown below, it is more likely that the piece belonged to Silao itself.
From the estampages supplied by Babu Puran Chand, I could read a conside able part of the epigraph. For its complete decipherment, however, an examination of the original or, at least, & set of better impressions was essential. During the summer of that very year, I had occasion to visit Silao, but unfortunately I then missed Babu Bhagwan Das there. Consequently I had to go disappointed without seeing either his collection or the inscribed pedestal in question.
About two years later, Mr. J. K. Roy, the then Custodian of Nalanda Museum and Monuments, at my request, got a fresh set of impressions prepared, which he kindly sent to me along with his description of the sculptured piece. In December 1939, Mr. Amalananda Ghosh, Assistant Superintendent, Archæological Survey, Central Circle, Patna, further obliged me by furnishing me with two photographs of the damaged sculpture and three impressions, on thin paper, of its inscription. The new material enabled me to read the inscription almost entirely.
As may be seen from the accompanying photographie reproduction, the pedestal is elliptical in shape and has, in its centre, a remnant of the kneeling statue, carved in the round, which once surmounted it. The pedestal stands 9" high, and measures 20' at its longest and 141' at its broadest. The extant portion of the figure shows that it represented & person seated in the attitude that is technically called õlidhäsana. The symmetrical lines seen on its right leg suggest folds of the dhoti or the lower garment. Further, the pedestal has, at its bottom, a tenon, about 6" long and 4" wide, which shows that the present sculpture was placed on a larger pedestal by the side of some other statue or statues. This is borne out also by the posture of the present image, as judged from its surviving portion. The posture recalls to one's mind certain representations of Garuda, Vishnu's vāhana, depicted as offering worship with folded hands or waiting on his master. In the present instance, however, the figure represented, as is disclosed by the inscription, not Garuda but Kāśyapa who, as will presentiy be shown, was a famous disciple of the Buddha. We may thus conclude that the present image, representing Kāšyapa in worshipful attitude, Was criginally installed next to the statue of his teacher, Gautama Buddha, in a shrine or & sanctuary somewhere near the modern village of Silao.
The pedestal is partitioned into two by an inward curve. The inscription runs along the upper band and consists of three lines, each measuring about 21' in length. It is
1 Silao is a railway station on the Bukhtiarpur-Bebar Light Railway section of East Indian Railway. * See below p. 331.
