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No. 18-BRICK INSCRIPTION OF DAMAMITRA
(1 Plate) D. C. SIRCAR, Ootacamund
(Received on 20.1.1958) Dr. A. S. Altekar has recently published, in the pages of this journal, a brick inscription in Brāhmi characters of about the first century B.C. or the first century A.D. Its language is Prakrit which is, however, considerably influenced by Sanskrit. It is a fragmentary record in one line referring to the performance of the horse-sacrifice by Aśvavātāyaniputra Devimitra.' Dr. Altekar has wrongly taken the name of the performer of the sacrifice to be Devamitra This inscription was discovered in a mound near the village of Musõnager in the Kanpur District, O.P.
In December 1957 I visited the Lucknow Museum where I noticed another brick inscription of the type of the Musānagar epigraph published by Dr. Altekar. It is also a fragmentary record, the left portion of the brick (11" x 71" x 4") being broken away exactly as in the case of the other inscription. The two records may have been originally of the same length; but the extant part of the present inscription, engraved in one line on a side face of the brick and covering an area of about 7" in length, is smaller than that of the Musõnagar epigraph. Individual aksharas in our epigraph are between " and 17' in height. Dr. Altekar suggests that the inscribed brick originally formed a part of the platform built round a sacrificial post or pillar.
The resemblance betwe’n the two inscriptions is striking. In the first place, both the present epigraph and the Musānagar inscription are incised on a narrow side face of the bricks in question and not on a broad face of them. Secondly, our record refers to a horse-sacrifce performed by Dāmamitra, a name ending in the word mitra as in the case of Devimitra of Musānagar inscription. Thirdly, the size, style, characters and language of the two epigraphs are similas. Fourthly, both the records end with a symbol standing midway between a cross and the so-called Ujjayini symbol found on early Indian coins. Fifthly, although the exact findspot of our inscription is unknown, the inscribed brick is stated to have been presented to the Lucknow Museum by Mr. F. S. Fanthome, when he was Additional District Magistrate of Kanpur and thus appears to have been discovered in a locality in the Kanpur District if not at Musānagar itself. There is an old mound at Musánagar and ancient coins have occasionally been found there after the rainy season. It is therefore not impossible that both Devimitra and Dāmamitra belonged to the same family of rulers having their capital at Musānagar or its neighbourhood.
As already indicated above, the characters of our record closely resemble those of the Musānågar inscription. But there are some indications which appear to suggest that our epigraph belongs to a slightly later date. In the first place, the triangularity of the lower part of m and of v is more pronounced in the record under study. Secondly, the -mātrā in mi is a prolongation of the right upper limb of m while the other inscription exhibits the said vowel-mark as a distinct addition to the consonant. Thirdly, while both the left and right limbs of the lower part oft are of the same size in the Musānagar epigraph, the right stroke is considerably elongated in the present record.
1 See Vol. XXX, pp. 118 ff. and Plate. + Macron over e and o has not been used in the article. • A photograph of the inscription was published in Archaeology- A Review, 1955-56, Plate LXIX, C. • Cf. above, Vol. XXX, p. 118.
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