Epigraphia Indica Vol 34

Author(s): D C Sircar
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India

Page 37

No. 3--BUDDHIST INSCRIPTION FROM KAUSAMBI
(1 Plate) A. GHOSH, NEW DELHI
(Received on 29.1.1959)
The inscription, edited here for the first time at the suggestion of the Government Epigraplist for India and with the consent of Shri G.R. Sharma, Director, Allahabad University Kau. bām.bi Expedition, was discovered on the 24th December 1950 at Kosam' (lat. 25° 20' N.; long. 81° 227 E.) in the Allahabad District, Uttar Pradesh, in the course of the extensive excavation of the site, being conducted by the University of Allahabad since 1949. The ruins of Kosam, it is now well known, represent the ancient city of Kausambi. Apart from the facts known before,' the results of the present excavation, including the discovery of the record under study, have yielded enough evidence to confirm the identification.
Shri Sharma informs me that the inscribed slab was discovered lying on a floor at a distance of 36 feet 8 inches to the west of the eastern boundary-wall of an excavated monastic complex, 32 feet to the east of the eastern site of the Main Stūpa and 11 feet to the south of the southern wall of the Main Chaitya, the whole complex being situated within the fortifications of the city, near its south-eastern corner.
The inscription is neatly engraved in a horizontal compartment on a sculptural slab of reddish Bandstone (which, Shri Sharma says, is not of the Mathuri but of the Central Indian variety), 21 inch thick, now broken at the top and right-hand side. Its extant base and maximum height each measure 1 foot 10 inches. Like other slabs of its kind, it was, in all likelihood, square in shape, and, to judge from the available fragment, bore at the centre a pair of foot-marks in relief, two lines of inscription (at least the first of them running from edge to edge) at their bottom and floral designs of sorts and dwarf human figures, of which a fragment consisting of the left portion of a person holding a fan-like object under his left arm now exists. The partly preserved footmark bears a spoked wheel on its sole, a svastika symbol on each of its little toes and three symbols, including what may be called a handled and spouted vase, on its great toe. If the missing parts of the slab are conjecturally restored on the basis of the extant portion, it would be about 3 feet 2 inches square. It is difficult to say whether, in addition to the two lines of the inscription now available on the toe-side of the foot-marks, there existed two more lines representing the beginning of the epigraph on the heel-side as well.
The extant part of the inscription consists of two lines, the right portion of both of which bas broken away, and the restored drawing will show that roughly one half of the inscription (i.e. the left half) is now available. The epigraph is written in Brāhmi characters of about the firsi century A. D. Its language is Prakrit influenced by Sanskrit. As regards orthography, the use of sh in Ghoshit-ūrāme and din sila in line 2 is noteworthy.
As indicated above, it is not possible to say whether the first part of the inscription containing the name of a ruler and a year of his reign or of an era is now lost. But the date of the epigraph can be determined, on palaeographic considerations, by comparing its characters with
Moron ovore and o has not boen used in this article. D. R. Sahni in JRAS, 1927, pp. 689-98. fe. Plate C.