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348
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
SEPTEMBER, 1903.
Translation - 1.- Since formerly, ignorant of what should or should not be a theme, following the path of poetry merely, I sinfully celebrated what should not be celebrated,
2.- That smearing with the filth of utterance, I now, in reliance upon you who have won the bathing ghat of the merits of Sākya, shall endeavour to cleanse away,
3.- What sin, blinded by darkness, I wrought against the precious ones, the sinfulness of that offence I now remove and destroy.
4.- In singing the words and the virtues of you in Nirvana, may I not fall short of both paths of speech.'
This undeniable fact in the life of Mātrices, namely, his conversion from Brāhmanism, was of course far from singular. But it must be considered as of some importance in the event of our hearing a similar story regarding Asvaghoşa. The remaining hymns and the tracts on the Four Viparyayas and on the Kali age do not, on a cursory perusal, add anything to our knowledge of the author's life. The hymn to Tārā pray be connected with the allusion of Tāranātha to his seeing the goddess in a dream, but it seems to contain no reference to such an incident (though its concluding verses may have suggested the story), and it bears in fact so much of the character of a late Tantra that I am inclined to doubt its authorship.
I come now to the work, of which I append the transliterated text with a translation. The Mahārājakanikalekha or Letter to king Kanika' belongs to a class of Buddhist works known to 18 chiefly in connection with the Suhrillekha of Nāgārjuna, of which a text and translation were published by Dr. Wenzel in the Journal of the Pali Text Society for 1886. We may mention further the Gurulekha of the Bhikṣu Dgon .pa .pa (Asramin), the Putralekha of Sajjana, the Candrarājalekha of Yogesvare-Jaganmitrānant(d)s and the Sisyalekha of Candragomin, all found in Vol. Mdo. XCIV. of the Tanjur. The Mahārājakanikalekha (Mdo. XXXIII. foll. 78-82, XCIV. foll. 295-9) is already known to us from Tāranātha, who refers to it as follows :
Towards the end of his (Mātriceta's) life, king Kanika sent a messenger to invite the Acārya, who, however, being unable on account of his great age to come, despatched an Epistle and converted this king to the doctrine' (trans. p. 92).
The identity of the king Kanika is not yet placed beyond question. Täranātha asserts that he was not the same as Kaniska (pp. 89-90). According to him Mātriceța was an inhabitant of Kugumapura in the time of Bindusära, son of Candragupts. Towards the end of Matricea's life
Bindusara's son, king Sricandra ruled. After king Sricandra bad enjoyed the sovereignty, *there had elapsed many years, when in the west in the land of Tíli and Mälava a king Kanika, * young in years, was chosen as sovereign. Twenty-eight diamond-mines having been recently discovered, he lived in great wealth. He built four great temples according to the four regions of the world, and continually entertained 30,000 Bhiksus of the Great and Little Vehicle. Accordingly "one must know that king Kanişka and Kaniks are not one and the same person' (pp. 89-90, and the same distinction is made, p. 2). Under these circumstances it is important to observe that in the Epistle the king is said to belong to the Kusa race (v. 49). The identity of this name with the Kuşaņa of the inscriptions will not be disputed. But the use of this abbreviated form of it by a contemporary most excite a doubt of the correctness of M. Sylvain Lévi's explanation of it (Journal Asiatique, Sér. IX. Vol. VIII. (1896) p. 457 n.) as due to a mistaken apprehension of Kuşanavamia as containing a genitive. I am more inclined to believe that Kuşana was really a compound and to place the abbreviation in a line with the other shortened names.10
lis=ksetra.
This and the Suhrillekha are cited by M. Lévi, Journ. Asiatique, Sér. IX, Vol. VIIL (1096) p. 149. The Sisyalekha was published by Minayeff in the Zapiski of the Russian Archæological Society, Vol. IV. (1889) Pp. 44 899.
10 Concerning these doublets, see M. Lévi's note, Vol. IX. (1897) pp. 10-11.
