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No. 14-BRAHMI INSCRIPTION FROM SALIHUNDAM
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A. S. GADRE, BARODA Salihundam is a famous Buddhist site in the Srikakulam District of the Andhra State, about 12 miles by road from Srikakulam, the District hcadquarters. It is on the banks of the Vamsadharā which joins the Bay of Bengal some five miles further down. The hills of tbis place have yielded many Buddhist structures and antiquities which have been briefly described in this journal. Earlier excavations at the place have been fully described in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for the year 1919-20. When I visited the place in October 1953, I came across an inscribed casing slab of stone.
The slab bearing the inscription formed part of the top frieze of stones on the exterior surface of the Mahāchaitya. That it is a fragmentary record can be recognized from the fact that traces of letters preceding and following this inscription can be seen on the inscribed stone itself.
The inscription reads :
Dhamma(mā) Rañe Asokasirino
This fragmentary record refers to the religious edicts (dhanmā) of the illustrious Aboka. According to the Aryamaftjufrimülakalpa, Dharmäsoka, i.e. the Maurya emperor Asoka, set up stone pillars (Sila-yashți). at Chaityas as human memorials. Aboka himself is said to have visited the sites. Very probably the Mahachaitya at Salihundam is a creation of the Mauryan times. It would therefore be no wonder if a reference is made to Asoka's religious records in this inscription incised at a later date by devotees. An inscribed pot, discovered at this place, has been assigned by Sri T. N. Ramachandran on palaeographic grounds to the first century A. D. at the latest. This obviously is the date of the pot and not of the structure which must have preceded it. As our stone forms part of the Mahāchaitya, it is apparently of an earlier date.
Some scholars are inclined to read the first two words in the inscription as Dharmarato (Sanskrit Dharmarājasya) and take it to be the epithet of Aboka.? In support of this reading attention is drawn to certain inscriptions referring to kings as Dharmarāja, Dharmamahārāja, etc. I differ on this point. According to Buddhist literature the epithet Dharmarāja was applied
1 Above, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 133 ff. Op. cit., pp. 34-38.
[The record does not appear to be fragmentary. On the stone slab on which the space occupied by the writing is 22 by 2 (an akshara being 1t" in height), there is no space for letters before the record in ton aksharas while there is what looks like a damagod punctuation mark after it (of. the symbol at the end of the Musanagar brick inscription, above, Vol. XXX p. 120, n. 5).-Ed.]
• Macron over e and o has not been used in this article. *K. P. Jayaswal, An Imperial History of India (1934). p. 12; Sanskrit Text, p. 27, vv. 370-374.
. It is likely that the slabs of the entire top friese of the stapa or of a part of it were inscribed and the inscription went round the drum of the atúpa in one line. All these slabs arn, however, unfortunately missing barring the one under review. [See note 3. above.--Ed.] Cf. A. Ghosh, Indian Archaeology, 1963-84, p. 18.
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