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NAGARJUNIKONDA INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF ABHIRA VASUSHENA, YEAR 30
199
[lo 30]
The lengthy name of this person is interesting in that it contains the names of both the gods Vishnu and Rudrasiva and that such lengthy joint names are popular in South India even today.
As the associates of the above three persons are mentioned certain people of Sanjayapura as the Yorājis. The meaning of the word Yoraji is uncertain and it is possible that the expression yöräjibhi contains an error. If it is believed that the akshara na was left out by the scribe or engraver after yo through oversight, it may be conjectured that yöräjibhi is a mistake for Yonarăjabhih and stands for Sanskrit Yavanarajaiḥ, and that certain Yavana or Indo-Greek chiefs of Sañjayapura are referred to in the passage in question. As regards Yavana or Greek settlements in Western India, we know that the Satavahana king Gautamiputra Satakarni (c. 106-30 A.D.) fought with the Sakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas in the first half of the second century A.D.1 while the Raghuvamsa (IV, 61) of Kalidasa (about the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century A.D.) locates a Yavana land between the Northern Konkan and Persia, probably in the Sind region. But it has to be considered whether, if Sañjayapura was a city as it seems to be, several chiefs could have been ruling from the same place. The possibility of the rule of a king and a sub-king from the same capital, however, cannot be precluded in view of the fact that the dual number is represented by the plural in the Prakrit language. As regards the location of Sanjayapura, it should be pointed out that Sañjaya is stated to have been another name of Sañjān in the Thana District of Bombay State. The place is often identified with Sañjayantinagari mentioned in the Mahabharata in connection with Sahadeva's conquests in the South. If the above. interpretation of the passage in question is acceptable, the inscription under study offers the only evidence regarding Indo-Greek rule in the Sañjan area about the close of the third century A.D... These Indo-Greeks, if they really ruled at Sañjan, appear to have been originally subordinates of the Sakas of Western India.
The god Ashṭabhujasvamin is known from a conch-shell inscription unearthed from the same site at Nagarjunikonda. This epigraph in Prakrit reads: Bhagavato Athabhujasāmisa (Sanskrit Bhagavataḥ Ashtabhujasvaminaḥ). There is no doubt that Ashṭabhujasvamin was a form of the od Narayana (Vishnu) invoked at the beginning of our record. The name of the deity suggests hat his image in question was endowed with eight arms. This seems to be the earliest reference to the eight-armed form of Vishnu." The expression rumbara-bhava used in the inscription under study as an epithet of the deity cannot be satisfactorily explained. If rumbara may be regarded
1 Cf. Select Inscriptions, p. 197, text line 5. These Yavanas (Greeks) and Pahlavas (Parthians) were probably the allies of the Sakas of Western India, with whom Gautamiputra is known to have fought. A Pahlava was ruling over Kathiawar as a viceroy of Saka Rudradāman I (c. 130-52 A. D.). See ibid., p. 174, text line 19.
2 The Successors of the Satavahanas, pp. 325-26. According to an inscription of the second century A. D., a Yavana-raja was governing Kathiawar as the viceroy of the Maurya king Aśoka (Select Inscriptions, p. 171, text line 8) while coins of the Indo-Greek kings Apollodotus and Menander were current at Broach in the first century according to the Periplus (ed. Schroff, pp. 41-42).
We have coins jointly issued by some Indo-Greek kings, e.g., Strato I and Strato II, while such joint issues are a wellknown feature of the coins of the later foreign rulers of the north-western part of India. Amongst the Kushāpas, often two kings bearing imperial titles ruled at the same time and the rule of the Mahakshatrapa and the Kshatrapa at the same time is well-known from the history of the Sakas of Western India.
See N. L. Dey, Geog. Dict., p. 177. Sañjayanti is sometimes identified with Vaijayanti or Banavasi (The Successors of the Satavahanas, pp. 220-21). But Sanjayapuri and Vanavasa are mentioned side by side in our record.
II, 31, 70: Nagarim Sanjayantim cha Pashandam Karahatakam | dûtair-eva vaše chakre karum chainǎn= adapayat ||
See Indian Archaeology 1958-59-A Review, p. 8 and Plate V b.
For the eight-armed form of the god in early works, see Varahamihira's Brihatsamhita, LVIII, 31. For an early image of the same deity, belonging to the Kushana age, see Proc. IHC, Jaipur, 1951, pp. 78-79.
