Indian Antiquary Vol 35

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 19

JANUARY, 1906.) KHAROSTRA AND THE KHAROSTRI WRITING.
13
Shin-gon sect cultivated with passionate enthusiasm the study of the Siddham, introduced (564] into Japan by the illustrious Ko-bo Dai-chi, who had been to China for initiation (804806), and who, on his return to his own country, was careful to give directions that the most important texts should be copied and sent to him, among others the Si-tan-tsen-ki of Tche-kouan, the Siddham of Campanagara and the Siddham of Kumārajīva. A sub-commentary on the Si-tou-taeu-ki of Tche-kouan, composed at the end of the XVIIth century, the Si-tan-tseu-ki-tche-nan-chuo hioven-t'an, reproduces the passage of the Si-lan-ts'ang which I have just translated and adds (p. 3b) some further information, the origin of which I cannot determine: “This rşi was born in the Hou kingdom; he composed the writing like this."
It may seem surprising, at the first glance, that Chinese commentators and lexicographers, once in possession of the Sanskrit word Kharoştra (through the transcription K'ia-lou-chou-tan-le), were not led, almost immediately, to connect it with the name of the Kharoştri writing. As a matter of fact, the question could not present itself; the idolum libri, which has done so much harm everywhere, had intervened to falsify science. When the name Kharoştra disappeared from actual use, wiped out, doubtless, by the extension of Chinese influence; the name of the Kharosti, stripped of all connection with facts, changed, by a normal process of alteration, into Kharosthi, a word which suggested to the imagination an entirely satisfactory interpretation, “ass-lip," and corresponded quite as well as Kharogtrī to the intermediate form, Kharoţthi, of the vulgar tongue. The two words Kharostri and Kharosthi do, in fact, yield the same Prākrit form Kharoţthi; at this stage of confusion the ides of the lip, ostha, was destined to efface all recollection of the original uatra the camel, so much the more easily as this word uşțra, standing alone, goes through an abnormal process in the Präkrits (cf. Pischel, Gramm, der Präkrit-Sprachen, § 304) by which it loses the regular aspiration; the Präkrits turn the Sanskrit uetra, auştrika, into utta, attiya, while raţthika, for instance (ib. $ 83), represents the Sanskrit rūgtrika. Placed, as it was, in the regular classification between the Chinese writing and the Brähmi, the Kharotthi writing needed some such sponsor as Ts'ang-hie, the traditional inventor of the Chinese characters, and Brahma whose name was naturally suggested to the imagination by the name Bräbmi (writing of the Brahmans or of the Brahman's country). The holy man Kharootha, "ass-lips," presented himself to fill the vacant place.
Was he specially invented to explain the name of the Kharoşthi by a process of grammatical induction? And did there exist, before, among the vast collection of Central-Asian saints, a saint marked out by the unenviable privilege of having ass-lips? However this may be, one of the Mahāyāns sütras most closely connected with the region of Khotan and Kashgar represents the rsi Kharoetha as the hero of a rather highly elaborated legend; it is the same Süryagarbha-sūtra, which has already helped me to resolve the question of Kharoştra, and which was translated into Chinese, as will be remembered, between 589 and 618. The two sections of Chapter 8 of this work ( = Chap. 41 of the Mahā-samnipāta ; Tôk, ed. III. 3, 36-42) are consecrated to the si Kharoştha :
[665] "The Bodhisattva Chou-tche [ho]-lo-80 (translated, light-savour = Çaci-rasa) addressed the Nägas and said to them: Great kings ! in past time, at the beginning of the Bhadrakalpa, there was a great city called Campā .... in this city was a devaputra named Ta-san-mo-to (mahāsaminata)." One of his wives, a woman of more than commonly violent passions, gave birth, after union with an ass, to "a son who had the head, ears, mouth and eyes of an ass, but the body of a man .... One day a Rākşasi named Lou-chen (ass-spirit, Khari?) saw the child, whom his mother had abandoned ; she took him, reared him even as one of her own children and taught him to feed on the drugs of the immortals. He passed his time with the children of the gods. A certain great god, afterwards, became interested in him and protected him. The gods gave him the name K'sa-lou-che-tcha (K barorths) which means in Chinese: Agg-lips) t'a sien (maba +rai), the hody inan. In the Himālaya and other places, whithersoever he went, fine flowers and fruits, good medicines, sweet smells and so forth were produced, .i. These drugs and fruits wrought upon