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No. 49-JNSCRIPTION IN CAVE IV AT AJANTA
(1 Plate) D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND
(Received on 15.11.1958) An inscription was recently discovered on the pedestal of the huge Buddha image in the shrine inside Cave IV at Ajanta in the Aurangabad District of Bombay State. Before the discovery of this record, it was generally believed that the cave bears no epigraphic records and therefore its age was a subject of speculation.
The inscription is a votive record written in two lines only. The writing covers an area about 5 feet 6 inches long and about 41 inches high. Individual letters are about 1 inch in height although conjuncts and consonants with vowel-marks are bigger in size. The preservation of the writing is not satisfactory. Some of the letters are damaged here and there, while six letters are totally lost about the middle of line 2.
The characters of the inscription closely resemble those of the epigraph of the time of the Väkätaka king Harishēna in Cave XVI at Ajanţă and of the Ghatotkacha cave inscription at the village of Jangla about fifteen miles from Fardapur near Ajanta, which mentions king Divasõna of the Vākāțaka dynasty. It has, however, to be pointed out that our inscription exhibits a form of th which is slightly later than that of the letter as found in the Väkātaka inscriptions. While in the Vākātaka records, a separate curve is attached to the inner side of the bottom, the present inscription exhibits a loop instead of the separate curve as in records like the Pipardula plates of king Narendra of Sarabhapura, who ruled about the beginning of the sixth century A. D. Since the Vākāțaka kinge Dévasēna and Harishēna flourished about the second half of the fifth century A.D., our inscription, which is slightly later than their records, may be assigned to the first half of tae sixth century.
It may be pointed out, in connection with the date of the record, that the earlier writers on the history of the Vakatakas entertained a wrong view in regard to the chronology of that dynasty. Some of these writers assigned the reigns of king Dēvasēns and his son and successor Harishēna to c. 475-500 A. D. and o. 300-20 A. D. respectively. But they mixed up the NändivardhanaPravarapura and Vateagulma branches of the family and wrongly made Dēvasēna and Harishēna
1 ASWI, Vol. I, pp. 53, 128 ff. and Plate LVI; above, Vol. XXVI, pp. 142 ff. and Plato facing p. 143 ; eto. ASWI, op. cit. pp. 138 #. and Plate IX.
CE. IHQ. Vol. IX, Plato faoing p. 145, text line 8; cf. his Kurud plated above, Vol. XXXI, Plato facing p. 284, text line 13, and Maitraka Dronasimha's Bhamodra Mohota plates of 502 A.D. (abovo, Vol. XVI, Plato facing p. 18, text-line 2). It may be noticed in this comection that the Siroda plates of Dovaraja, which use the samo type of looped th (cf. lines 2, 6), have been assigned on palacographical grounds to the 4th centry A.D. (above, Vol. XXIV, p. 144; Vol. XXVI, p. 389; The Classical Age, p. 191). I have now no doubt, howover, that the palaeography of the record is not earlier than the beginning of the Bth oentury.
• Soe above, Vol. XXXI, p. 267. ASWI, op. cit. p. 128.
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