Indian Antiquary Vol 42

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 31

JANUARY, 1913.)
EPIGRAPHIC NOTES AND QUESTIONS
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probably accompanied by oral descriptions as in the likhydnas so as to show clearly to them how Buddha was sarva-loka-sukh-dhara and thus induce them to imitate his actions in their lives.
There now renains the third word, vis., agniskan lha, and I am afraid I cannot give any satisfactory explanation here. The word ordinarily signifies a mass of fire, but this mass of fire must be of such a kind that it can be shown to be connected with a well-known incident and point to a moral. The only story that occurs to me in this connection is tbat narrated in Jataka No. 40 (Fausboll, Vol. I) called Khadiraig dra-jdtaka. The Bodhisattva of the story was the Lord High Treasurer of Benares. As he was sitting to take his meal, a Pachcheks Buddha rising form his seven days' trance in the Himalayas approached with his bowl and begged food. The Bodhisattva asked the bowl to be brought to him and filled it. But Mara wanted the Pachcheka Buddha to die of starvation by preventing the food from approaching him. So in the mansion of the Bodhisattva be created a fire-pit as fearful as in a hell. His cook who was taking the filled bowl to the Pachcheka Buddha saw this blazing fire and started back, The BodhisattVa came to know what had happened and went out in person to hand over the bowl to his guest. As he stood on the brink of the fiery pit, he noticed Mars, but heeded him not. And so be strode on with undaunted resolution to the surface of the pit of fire, and lo I there rose up to the surface a large and peerless lotus flower, which received the feet of the Bodhisattva. The bowl was given to the guest, and standing in the lotus he preached the truth to the people, extolling alms-giving and the commandments. .
Several of the jdtaka stories we find sculptured in the Bharabat and Sabchi sta ras. They thus appear to have become popular even so early as the third century B.C.; and there is no reason why one of them should not bave been utilised by Asoka to make visual representations for impressing the people. Besides, the story just summarised must have been thougbt by him as exactly fulfilling his purpose, because it lacidly illustrates the fruit of alms-giving, of which Asoka is never weary of speaking in his edicts. If he really wanted to encourage almsgiving, I do not think he could have made a happier selection for making representations of it and showing them to his subjects. The jdlaka again appears to have been considered to be * very important one by the Buddhists themselves. For the same tale is re-repeated under the name of Sreshthijataka in the Játakamdid of Aryaśāra published by Prof. Kern.
The word rdpu occurs in two ancient inscriptions. Line 2 of the well-known Hathi-gumpha inscription of Kharavela has the following :-tato lekha-rupa.zņın 1-0.vush ira-vidhi-visdradena, where the word has been rendered by 'painting' by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji. A Pabbosâ cave inscription again reads Sri-Kộishna-gopi-rúpa-karta, where Prof. Bühler translates it by 'statue'. I confine myself to the generic sense of the word, and render it by simply representation'. To this day it is a custom especially in villages, where English education has not spread, to make either paintings or clay representations of mythological scenes and explain to the people in detail what they are intended for. I have no doubt that Asoka must have done a similar thing. Nobody can, I am sure, object to such rúpas beicg called dirga, which means 'not only belonging to heavenly regions' but also pertaining to divine beings.'
XV.Talegaon Grant of the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I. My friend, Sirlar K. O. Mehendale, Sucretary of the Tharat-itihds-8 anshodhak-mandal, has kindly sent to ine for decipherment a set of copper plates recently brought to light at Talegaon (Dhamdhere's) in the Poona district. It registers a grant issueil by Krishna I. of the Râsbýrakúța dynasty. Most of the verses descriptive of the genealogy are found in other Râshyrakůța records. And the three or four new verses that are for the first time met with in this grant teach us nothing new excepting that in one stanza we are told that his son was called Prabhu-tungu. This mast evidently refer to his son Govindaraja, at whose request, as mentioned further in the inseription, the grant was made.
The charter was issued on the occasion of a solar eclipse which happened on the new moon day of Vaisakha of Saka 6903 when Plavanga was the cyclic year. At that time Kpishņa I.'s
• My attention to this Jataka was drawn by Prof. Dharmanand Kosambi,
The solar eclipse in question ooourroù on Wednesday the 33rd Maroh 768 A. D.