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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XXV.
slightly weather-worn, especially on the right-hand extremity where a few letters in the first line I have not been able to make out. Again, due to erosion, parts of letters and signs of superscript rēpha have, at certain places, been rendered obscure. In most cases, however, they can be made out from the moulds on the back of an estampage. The average size of the letters is ".
The characters telong to the northern class of alphabets. Kielhorn described this type as "the Magadha variety of the Nāgari alphabet", while some other scholars more appropriately call it "the Eastern variety of Nāgari". The script of the present record bears a close resemblance to that used in the Ghosrāwā inscription of the time of the Pāla king Dēvapāladēva who reigned from c. A.D. 801 to c. A.D. 8404. In view of this consideration, the present inscription, which neither bears a date nor mentions any ruler's name, may be placed in the first half of the ninth century A.D.
The language of the record is Sanskrit and its composition is entirely in verse, all the three stanzas forming but one sentence. The following points are worthy of note in respect of orthography, a consonant followed by a r is very often reduplicated, s is used for & in yas=cha, 1. 2 and gitas-cha, l. 3, and v is used for b in Vauddha, I. 3. The sign of avagraha appears twice. Grammatically, the form amit-ardhau, 1. 1, is wrong. As an adjective of kule, it ought to be amit-ardhini. Similarly the use of the feminine gender in the word ādi in sviya-sarhātik ādir, I. 3, is incorrect. In a compound like the present one, it should ordinarily be treated in the neuter gender. The exact sense of the expression yānti draidham, l. 2, in the given context is not clear to me, though I have rendered it as 'vie with one another's. Of lexicographical interest are the terms purasa, 1. 2. and samhātikā, l. 3. The former in all probability is meant to be an equivalent of purata which is equally of rare occurrence and means "gold'. The latter appears here as a synonym of samghāti or sarghātikā which is peculiar to Buddhist terminology and denotes one of the three robes of a monk' (tri-chivara).
As regards contents, the inscription is virtually a label to the image which once surmounted the pedestal, giving in a compendious form a laudatory account of the deity represented. The deity or the deified personage, as is disclosed by the inscription, was Kāśyapa.
This Kaśyapa is no other than the Buddha's favourite disciple Kāśyapa or Mahā-Käsyapa who is reputed to have convened the First Buddhist Council' at Rājagriha three months after the parinirvana of the Master. Even during the Buddha's lifetime Kāśyapa had become a foremost Arbat. It is perhaps on account of his playing such a prominent part in preserving and expounding the Lord's teachings that he has been accorded such an exalted rank as to be deified. In the Mahāyāna Buddhist iconography he has been confused with a previous Buddha, called Käsyapa. There he figures as the sixth ManushiBuddha of the group of seven. There is hardly any Buddhistic treatise wherein some
1 Above, Vol. IV, p. 244.
* Compare, for instance, the late Mr. N. G. Majumdar's remarka in Monographs of the Varendra Research Society No. 1 (Nalanda copper-plate of Deva paladēva), p. 2.
Ins. Ant., Vol. XVII, pp. 307 ff. and plate. .H. C. Ray, Dynastic History of Northern India, Vol. I, p. 379.
See below p 334, .1. • Childers, Dictionary of the Pali Language, under the word sanghafi.
1 Jean Przyluski, Le Concile de Rajarha, pp. 8, 30, etc.; R. C. Majumdar Buddhist Councils in Buddhistic Studies edited by B. C. Law, pp. 26 ff.
Alice Getty, Gods of Northern Buddhism p. 15; Benoytosh Bhattacharyya, Indian Buddhist Iconography.
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