________________
253
No. 47]
NOTES ON SENAKAPAT INSCRIPTION 46).1 About the inscription in question he says, 'I give below a copy of the Sanskrit writing on & slab attached to a great temple at Aring (i.e., Arang)'. [Here follows a transcript of the inscription.] The inscription states that there was a king named Süryaghosha.... One of his relatives died by a fall from an upper storey. As a result of grief consequent on this, he became indifferent to worldly matters and built a large structure for a sage. Thereafter flourished Udayana, who was said to have belonged to the Pārdava family...... His fourth son Bhavadēva was, like him, meritorious, brave and righteous. He built a Jaina temple. He belonged to the Jaina faith.'
The relevant extracts from Aurangabadkar's report given above leave no doubt that the reJord whose contents he summarised therein was identical with the inscription of Bhavadēva Ranakësarin. This record is incised in acute-angled characters. It is creditable to Aurangabadkar that he could grasp the contents of it fairly correctly, though from the mention of Jina in verses 1 and 37 he was misled into supposing that it was a Jaina record.
The foregoing account of Aurangabadkar's report would show that the doubts about the importance of his testimony are wholly unjustified and that there was no "speculation " on my part when I stated, on the authority of his report, that Bhavadēva Ranakēsarin's epigraph originally came from Arang. Aurangabadkar was an employee of Richard Jenkins who was Resident at Nagpur from 1807 to 1826. He, therefore, saw the inscription in question in situ at Arang more than fifty years before Cunningham noticed it deposited in the Nagpur Museum. Aurangabadkar's statement is thus much more reliable than Cunningham's conjecture. In fact it clinches the issue and proves incontrovertibly that the record came from Arang. As for Stevenson's evidence, "it comes to nothing. He merely states that the inscription was found at Nagpur." He does not connect it with Bhandak or any other place.
Apart from the testimony of Aurangabadkar, there are other reasons why the record could not have belonged to Bhandak. Bhavadēva Ranakēsarin, who restored the dilapidated temple of the Buddha, was a cousin of the great-grandfather of Sivagupta Balärjuna,' who flourished in the first half of the seventh century A.D. He, therefore, cannot be referred to a period later than the beginning of the sixth century A.D. Süryaghosha, who originally built the temple of
1 Through the good offices of Dr. H. N. Randle, who was then in charge of the India Office Library, I obtained woveral years ago photostat copies of some portion of this report relating to some inscriptions of the Kalachuris of Ratanpur. Soo CII, Vol. IV, p. 601, note 1. Jenkins sent to the Asistio Society of Bengal a report about these inscriptions which was published in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. XV.
* See the actual words of Aurangabadkar :
'या आरिंग्याचे महादेवालयाचे बगगवर संस्कृत अक्षर लिहिले त्याची नक्कल ...."सूर्यघोष नामे राजा पृथ्वीपतिः... त्याचा कोन्ही एक आप्त माडीवरून पडून मेला. त्याचे शोकास्तव वैराग्य आंगी मानून ऋषीच स्थान मोठ बांधल.याचे वंशीचा राजा उदयेन नामक.याजला परिववंशीचा म्हणत होते...... पाचा चवथा पुत्र भवदेव नामक.हाही त्यासारखा गुणवान, प्रतापवान सदाचारसंपन्न....'या राजान a fer star. aerat ETETTE...
[See below, p. 258.-Ed.)
Cunningham noticed the inscription in the Nagpur Museum sometime before 1873. See his ASR, Vol. IX, po 187.
See JBBRA8, Vol. I, 1841-44, pp. 148-49. Owing to & wrong reading of verse 5 of this inscription Stevenson supposed that Süryaghosha, who built the temple of the Buddha, was ruling over Orissa. See -JR48, 1905, p. 617, noto 1.
• Seo the genealogical table in my 'Three Ancient Dynasties of Mahakosala' (Bulletin of the Deccan College Romarch Institute, Vol. VIII, pp. 47 f.).
