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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
called Tripituka), which are mentioned by both the Chinese pilgrims as being at Mathura.
No. 3 is from the base of a pillar found at the same place as No. 1. It is cut in bold clear letters which are for the most part decipherable, as follows:--
Ayam kumbhaka dánam bhikshunam Suriyasya Buddha-rakshitasya cha prahitakanam. Anantyam (?) deyam dharmma pa... nam. Sarvasa prahitakanam arya dakshitaye bhavatu.
The purport of which would be: "This pillar is the gift of the mendicants Surya and Buddharakshita, prahitakas. A religious donation in perpetuity. May it be in every way a blessing to the prahitakas!"
I observe that Prof. Kern, in his "Notes on the Junnar Inscriptions" (Ind. Ant. vol. VI. p. 40), questions the probability of a bhikshu being ever a donor, since (as he says) monks have nothing to give away, all to receive. But in this place the reading is unmistakably clear, nor is the fact really at all inconsistent with Hindu usage. In the Mathura district I can point to two large masonry tanks, costing each some thousands of rupees, which have been constructed by mendicant bairagis out of alms that they had in a long course of years begged for the purpose. The word prahitaka, if I am right in so reading it, is of doubtful signification. It might mean either messenger' or 'committee-man,' a commissioner or a commissionaire.
No. 4 is from the mound called the Kankâlî tilâ. It is cut on the upper part of a broken slab which has an ornamental border round the edge, but otherwise presents a plain surface. The obverse of the stone is more elaborately carved, and resembles the spandril of a doorway, with a vine-leaf scroll, and in the jamb the model of a triumphal column support ing the figure of an elephant on a bell capital that is surmounted by winged lions. The upper portions of two such pillars as that here represented are in existence, the one at Sankisa, the other in my own collection with the date Huvishka Sam. 39 on the abacus: it has been figured in vol. II. of Gen. Cunningham's Archaeological Survey Reports. The first letter in the inscription at the back of this curious slab belongs to a word that has been destroyed: it is followed by the name of the donor in the genitive case, Mugali-putas. This would seem to be a distinctively Buddhist appellation, and
[AUGUST, 1877.
therefore worthy of remark, since most of the sculptures found in this tilá are of Jaina type.
No. 5 is from the base of a small headless seated nude figure of white stone, and, to judge from the style of the sculpture and the ill-formed letters, is of no very great antiquity. Under it is a row of six standing figures, three on either side of a central chakra. Nothing is recorded in the inscription beyond the date; but this is given both in words and figures, as follows:
Samvatsare sapta panyase 57 Hemanta tritiye divase trayadase. Asya purvayam: that is to say, "In the year fifty-seven (57), on the thirteenth day of the third winter month." It had been built up into a mud wall in the Manoharpur quarter of the city, and my attention was first called to it by General Cunningham. It is curious in two ways: first, because it definitely fixes, beyond any possibility of doubt, the value of the symbol representing 50; secondly, if the date is really the year 57 of the same era as that employed in the inscriptions of Kanishka and Huvishka, it is the earliest unmistakably Jaina figure yet found in this neighbourhood. I cannot, however, believe but that it is comparatively modern, and if so it affords a strong confirmation of a theory originally broached, I believe, by Mr. Thomas. He suggests that the Indo-Skythians using the era of the Seleucide, which commenced in the 1st of October 312 B.C., gave only the year of the century, omitting the century itself, in the same way as we write '77 for 1877. The theory is corroborated by the fact that only one of the Mathurâ inscriptions as yet found gives a date higher than a hundred, viz. 135; and this particular inscription probably belongs to an entirely different series: for in it the division of the year is not into the three seasons of Grishma, Varshâ, and Hemanta, but according to the Hindu calendar still in use, the month quoted being Paushya. It is, however, very doubtful whether the era of the Seleucide is the one intended; it might with equal or even greater probability be the Kasmirian era employed by Kalhana in the last three books of his Rajatarangini, and still in use among the Brahmans of that country. It is otherwise called the era of the Saptarshis, and dates from the secular procession of Ursa Major, Chaitra Sudi 1 of
