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No. 38)
FOUR BHAIKSHUKI INSCRIPTIONS 7 miles from Kiul and 24 miles from Kajra. On the other side of the village stands the small range known as the Uren hills. About sixty years ago, L. A. Waddell visited the village of Uren which he identified, in an interesting paper published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Volume LXI, part i, 1892, pp. 1-24, with one of the Buddha's hermitages on the western frontier of the country of I-lan-na-po-fa-to (Hiranya parvata, roughly identical with the present Monghyr District) as described by the seventh century Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang. He noticed a large number of inscribed images in the village as well as inscriptions, markings, sculptures and other ancient remains on the hills. But as regards the process of the loss and destruction of ancient remains from which the village was suffering at that time, Waddell observed," the unfortunate proximity of the hill to the railway and the excellent quality of the rock (granite) have induced the railway authorities to use the hill as a quarry for road-metal and only about six years ago two of the most interesting of the rock-sculptures were in this way demolished and the fragments further broken up and carried off as ballast, and the blasting operations have now extended to within a few feet of the more important rock-sculptures and markings still remaining. Many of the inscribed statues also have been carried off from time to time by the overseers or contractors supervising the quarrying operations; one of these in particular, a Mr. S., is reported to have carried off, about thirty-six years ago, a full cart-load of the best preserved statuettes, the ultimate destination of which cannot now be traced.” In a foot-note to these observations, Waddell further says, “Since writing the above, I have again visited the site and find that further quarrying operations have been extensively carried on since the submission of this report to the Society. The western cliff bearing numerous chaitya figures has been in great part removed by blasting, only the fractured bases of a few of the chaityas still remaining. Also at the south-east margin of the hill, where the rock was highly polished and contained ancient markings, most of this surface has been removed by blasting." It is therefore no wonder that I could not trace most of the inscriptions and other ancient remains that had been noticed by Waddell about sixty years previously, when I visited the village of Uren in January 1950. On the hills, I found only the engravings of several stūpa designs, one of them alone containing a line of inscription. I also examined a collection of extremely mutilated images and votive stūpas at the Chandi-sthana in the village and another at its Siva-sthāna. Some of these images were found to contain a few lines of writing at their base3. A few broken images also were noticed half buried in the ground at the side of the main road running through the village and one of these was found to bear an inscription. I took impressions of altogether fourteen image inscriptions at Uren, many of which, however, contained nothing but the Buddhist formula ye dhammi, etc. Two of the records refer to the reign of Ramapala (circa 1084-1126 A.C.), the Pala king of Bengal and Bihar, one of them being dated in the fourteenth regnal year of that monarch. Two of the image inscriptions at Uren were found to be written in the so-called Bhaikshuki lipi or arrow-head characters.
When Waddell visited Uren about sixty years ago, he observed no less than four images with inscriptions in the Bhaikshuki or arrow-head script and photographs of two of them were published by him along with his paper in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. It is possible that he himself or some other later visitor to the village carried away the images containing the two inscriptions of which photographs were published in the above journal. Thus the two Bhaikshuki inscriptions, examined and copied by me at Uren, may be the remaining two of the four such
1 S. Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World, Vol. II, 1884, pp. 190-91. * Op. cit., p. 2.
Tec. cit. • Op. ch., p. 17. "Vido op. cit., Plate IV, Nos. 1 and 2.
