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No. 38) FOUR BHAIKSHUKI INSCRIPTIONS
225 of them is written in the interesting Bhaikshuki or arrow-head script employed in certain Buddhist inscriptions from Uren which had been the subject of my study only three months earlier and have been dealt with in the first part of this paper. At my request, Dr. B. Ch. Chhabra, Government Epigraphist for India, kindly permitted me to edit the inscription for this journal.
No information was available to me about the exact findspot of the inscription. It is reported to be engraved on the pedestal of an image of the Buddhist daity Avalokitēsvara-Lökanātha now preserved in the B. R. Sen Museum, Maldah, with the exhibit number M. M. R. 110. It is very probable that the image was collected from a village in the Maldah District. The inscription is written in four lines which are divided into two halves, each containing two lines. The upper half is subdivided into four parts, apparently due to exigencies of space on the pedestal of the image in question, while the lower half has three subdivisions. The letters are of the same small size as in the Uren inscriptions written in the same script.
As already observed, the characters belong to the class called tha Bhaikshuki or arrowhead alphabet known to have been used by the Buddhist monks of tha Magadha region in Eastern India in the age of the Palas of Bengal and Bihar. Although al-Biruni seems to confine the use of the Bhaikshuki script to the monks of Uddandapura, identified with modern Bihar in the Patna District, the discovery of the Kara inscription in the Allahabad District of the U. P. and that of the present one in the Maldah District of West Bengal appear to suggest a wider distribution. The letters employed in the inscription under discussion closely resemble those of the Uren inscriptions, although there are certain palaeographical peculiarities in the present record that are not noticed in the latter. We have here no confusion between the forms of m and s, the loop of the latter being put a little lower than that of the former. Ch has, however, two different forms, one of which having no appreciable distinction from v (cf. achāryya in line 1; avacha in line 3; cha, quamvādi in line 4). There is no marked difference between the sign for medial i and medial i. Medial 0, joined with the consonant by a vertical stroke, as in mo (line 2) and ro (line 4), is interesting. The different forms of p, already noticed by scholars, are to be observed in palitao in line 2 and prabhava in line 3, one of the forms differing very little from d. B and v are indicated by different signs. The initial vowels a, 7 and 7 occurring in the inscription resemble the forms of these letters as found in the Uren inscriptions.
The language of the inscription is a mixture of Sanskrit and Pali. Its orthography closely resembles that of the Uren inscriptions. It may be noted that y preceded by r has been duplicated.
The second part of the inscription consisting of lines 3-4 reproduces the celebrated Buddhist formula, Ye dhammā, etc., also quoted in all the three Uren inscriptions. Like, however, the interesting additional passage referring to the monk who was responsible for the installation of the image in question in the first of the three Uren inscriptions, we have in the present record information regarding a Buddhist monk whose dėya-dhamma the image of AvalokitēsvaraLökanātha bearing the epigraph was. This section says that the image was the meritorious gift of Bhadanta Buddhapalita. The word bhadanta (also bhanta and bhaddanta) is well-known from Päli literature to have been used as an honorific epithet (cf. English Reverend, Venerable, etc.) or as an address in cases concerning Buddhist monks, although there is difference of opinion in regard to its derivation. I am inclined to trace it to Sanskrit bhavat; but some scholars think that it is derived from a word like bhadr-anta, i.e., "one who is the foremost of the noble," while others suggest that its root lies in the expression bhaddam te or bhadra të (literally, “let there be good to you ") with which the monks greeted every one paying homage to them.'
1 Bahler, Table No. VI, columns xviii-xix, line 35.
. Select Inscriptions, Volume I, pp. 80, note 1; 223, note 6. The early Prakrit form of the word, bhanta, is found in the Bairat inscription of Aboka. The form bhaddanta seems to be influenoed by the oonooption of its derivation from bhadränta. The word may be compared with Sanskrit afra-bhavat and talra-bhaval. 6 DGA
