Epigraphia Indica Vol 34

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

Page 38

15
No 3]
BUDDHIST INSCRIPTION FROM KAUSAMBI
those of other inscriptions of comparable chronological and geographical horizons, i.e. those closely preceding and following the beginning of the Christian era, to which epoch the inscription has to be assigned, and belonging to the Ganga-Yamuna dodb, in which Kausambl (Kosam) is situated.
A comparison with the inscriptions of Ashadhasena1 of the second half of the first century B.C., found at Pabhosa 6 miles to the west of Kosam, would suggest that the date of our inscription is later, the characters of the latter exhibiting more pronounced serifs and a more squattish shape-a characteristic of the Kushana script. Out of similar considerations, the present record may be assigned to a date later than that of the Kosam inscription of Gotiputa." Attention may be drawn to the following palaeographical peculiarities of the inscription under study: the extremities of the left limbs of a curve inwards and are not oblique straight lines; y has its legs turning inwards and not pointing vertically upwards; r has the shape of a hook; and the left leg of l is an oblique line from the right to the left.
The characters of our inscription resemble those of the Mathura inscriptions of Soḍāsa or Somḍasa (first quarter of the first century A.D.) and more closely those of the early Kushanas of Kanishka's house. It may be roughly assigned to a date about the latter half of the first century A. D.
This dating is not inconsistent with the stratigraphic evidence derived out of the excavation. Shri G. R. Sharma informs me: "The excavation of the area shows eighteen Subperiods, of which the earliest two antedated the Northern Black Polished Ware, the next seven were contemporary with that Ware and the last nine were later than it. The penultimate Sub-period is associated with the seals of Toramana and Hunarāja, and possibly also with the coins of Toramana. The average duration of a Sub-period at the site thus works out to be about eighty years,' and as the floor on which the inscription was discovered belongs to the thirteenth Sub. period (from bottom upwards), it has to be dated c. 200 A.D. As however inscriptions and images were retained in the monastery for long periods, this date should be taken as the upper limit of the date of the inscription and not the date of its engraving."
1 Above, Vol. II, pp. 240-43.
*N. G. Majumdar (J. Marshall and A. Foucher, The Monuments of Sanchi, Vol. I, p. 271, note 6) places Bahasatimitra, whose nephew Ashadhasena was, in c. 50-25 B.C. Other dates recently proposed for Bahasatimitra are not inconsistent with this (cf. D. C. Sircar in The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 174). I hope nobody still proposes a much earlier date for him on his supposed identity with Pushyamitra Sunga.
Above, Vol. XVIII, p. 159 and Plate.
A. Cunningham, Arch. Surv. Ind. Rep., Vol. XX, 1885, p. 49 and Plate V; G. Bühler, above, Vol. II, p. 195 and Plates; R P. Chanda, Archaeology and Vaishnava Tradition (MASI, No. 5), p. 170 and Plate XXVI b.
*Like the date of all other rulers of this period, the date of Sodasa is uncertain. R. P. Chanda observed, 'No one has assigned Sodasa to a later epoch than the first century A.D.'. The latest tendency, following Ston Konow (CII, Vol. II, Part I, p. XXXIV), is to refer the year 72 of his Mathura inscription to the ora of 57 B. C.; of. Sircar in op. cit., p. 126, etc.
Within this group should be ineluded those on early Kushana Buddha or Bodhisattva statues, which, though found at places far away from Mathura, were manufactured (and probably inscribed as well) in the workshops of Mathura out of local sandstone and in the local art-idiom. They are: the Kosam inscription of the year 2 (above, Vol. XXIV, p. 212 and Plate), the Sarnath inscription of the year 3 (ibid., Vol VIII, p. 176 and Plate) and the Set-Mahet (Saheth-Maheth or Srävasti) inscription of the year 19 (ibid., Vol. VIII, p. 181), all belonging to the reign of Kanishka and referring either to the monk Bala and the nun Buddhamitra or to either of them.
In saying this, Shri Sharma evidently has in his mind something like the following: The occupation on the site lasted for about fourteen centuries, beginning roughly with 800 B.C., i.e. two Sub-periods before the advent of the Northern Black Polished Ware in c. 600 B.C. (B. B. Lal in Ancient India, Nos. 10-11, p. 23) and ending roughly with 600 A.D., i.e. one Sub-period after Toramana, c. 500 A.D. The duration of one Sub-period thus works out to about 80 (1400+18) years.