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182
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[VOL. XXX with trasya Vasudevasya1 Sam. The aksharas immediately preceding trasya, now lost, must have been devapu, Devaputra being a characteristic epithet of the Kushana emperors of Kanishka's house, to which king Vasudeva, mentioned in the passage, is known to have belonged. It is possible to think that Devaputrasya in the line was preceded by the expression Mahārājasya. In the inscriptions of the Kushana rulers of Kanishka's house, the word Devaputra is often preceded by Mahārāja and in some cases by Mahārāja Rājātirāja. The akshara Sam, which is a contraction of the word samvatsare, is followed by the symbol for 60 and a unit sign which is partially damaged. This imperfectly preserved figure, however, looks more like 4 or 7 than any other numeral. Thus the inscription under study was engraved in the year 64 or 67 of the Kanishka era during the reign of the Kushāņa emperor Vasudeva. This is a very important information, supplied for the first time by the present record, as so long the earliest epigraph of Vasudeva's reign was known to be the year 744 of the era in question, corresponding to 152 A. D. in the opinion of most scholars. Since the latest known date of Huvishka's reign is the year 60% of the same era, the intervening period between the last known date of that king and the earliest known date of Vasudeva had so far to be reckoned as no less than fourteen years. The present inscription reduces this period to four or seven years only.
The number 64 or 67 in the date of the inscription in line 1 is followed by varsh[a]-māse dviti 2 divasi... (Sanskrit varshä-mäse dvitiye 2 divase...), the number of the day in the month being possibly incised at the beginning of the next line (line 2) and now lost. The actual date of the inscription is therefore some day in the second month of the rainy season in the year 64 or 67 of the Kanishka era. As the season in question followed the fullmoon day of the month of Ashadha and lasted for four months till the fullmoon of Kärttika, the second month of it corresponded to the lunar (Purnimanta) month of Bhadra (August-September). The actual date of our inscription was therefore a day of Bhadra in 142 or 145 A. D.
8
The object of the inscription is recorded in the following lines (lines 2-5), the beginning of all of which, as noticed above, is broken away. Line 2 reads: nam sa[rva]sha yatr-opanana p[ü]järtha, although it is difficult to determine whether an akshara is lost at the end of it. In Sanskrit, the passage would be: nam sarvesham yatr-otpannānām pūjärtham. The epithet upana (Sanskrit utpanna), i.e. 'born', seems to suggest that nam at the beginning of the line is the concluding part of an expression like satvānam (Sanskrit sattvānām), i.e.of the creatures [that were born]'. Line 3 reads: na parigraha[ya*] achariyana Mahasaghika] with possibly the akshara nam lost at the end. In Sanskrit, the passage would be: nam parigrahāya acharyānāṁ Mahāsānghikānām. Barring na(-nām) at the beginning of the line, the passage means: for the acceptance of the teachers of the Mahasanghika community'. The ar rangement of words in this part of the record would suggest that na at the beginning of line 3 is the remnant of a word in the sixth case-ending plural, which should have to be read with pujärtha at the end of the previous line. It may be conjectured that the complete passage read something like pujärtha [sarva-Buddhana (Sanskrit püjärtham sarva-Buddhānām), 'for the adoration of all the Buddhas'. Consequently it would appear that a lost word at the beginning of line 2, to be read along with the
1 Macron over e and o has not been used in this article.
The Age of Imperial Unity, op. cit., p. 141.
Select Inscriptione, pp. 134, 141, 152; also pp. 135, 144, 147.
Lüders' List, No. 60.
Ibid., No. 56.
Select Inscriptions, pp. 63, 119n, 122, 134n; JRASB, Vol. XIV, p. 118.
*The Mahasanghikas represented a reformist group that seceded from the orthodox Buddhist Sangha at the Second Council held in the third century B. C. See Mahavamsa, V. For their mention in Kushāņa inscriptions, cf. Select Inscriptions, Vol. I, p. 154, etc.
See ibid., pp. 117, 120, 129, etc.
