Indian Antiquary Vol 43

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

Page 23

JANUARY, 1914.] A NOTE ON THE PADARIYA OR RUMMINDEI INSCRIPTION
must mean 'a flawless block of stone' (ein fehlerfreier Felsblock) and may be connected with ganda-sild and ganda-saila, a rough block of stone', and further with a number of derivations from a root gada-varane (recorded in the Dhâtup.§35, 84g), which occur in various northern Buddhist and Prâkrit texts. But although this is grammatically absolutely right, I do not believe in it any more than in Dr. Fleet's explanation, "a stone surrounding and screening wall," which violates the rules of grammar. It is quite impossible for me to understand why Aśoka should have thought it an action so remarkable as to be recorded for perpetuity that he had a rough block of stone made flawless, and a stone pillar cut out of it; for any person who saw the pillar could easily convince himself that it was smooth and well-polished, without any need of having this pointed out to him in the inscription. But there is another reason of far more importance which makes me disbelieve Pischel's interpretation, and generally any interpretation that does not try to account for it: Hiuan Tsang tells us that Aśoka had a pillar erected on this spot with a horse on its top. It does not matter whether Hiuan Tsang himself saw the horse lying broken on the ground, or whether it had already been removed when he visited the placelo; no sound interpretation will doubt that he really knew that there had been a horse. And we may without hesitation believe that Aśoka-or the person who had his order executed-considered it far more important to record that a horse had been made and put up there, than that the pillar had been cut out and polished from a rough block of stone. The only real question is this: can we find in vigadabhi a word that can be made to mean a horse' without straining the linguistic usage? I think we can, and shall try presently to prove it.
The whole inscription is quite clear in grammatical forms with the exception of the single word vigadabhi, and would run in Sanskrit as follows:
1. Devânâm-priyena Priyadarsinâ râjñâ vimsativarshâbhishiktena
2. âtmanâ âgatya mahîyital1 iha Buddho jâtah Sâkyamunir-iti
3. sila *vigaḍabhi ca kâritâ silâstambhaś chochchhrâpitaḥ
4. iha Bhagavân jâta iti Lumbinigrâma udbalikṛitaḥ
19
5. ashtabhagyaś cha (kṛitab).
=
Now, what is vigalabhi? Evidently a compound, for the derivations with the laddhita suffix-bha (Pân. V. 2, 139), although increased by Pischel l. c. p. 728 by some new examples, scarcely, in my opinion, offer a possibility of explaining this word. I take vigada-bhi to be in Sanskrit vigala-bhrit, a word which does not exist, that I freely admit, but this is no objection to the derivation of Prâkrita words, when made in conformity with grammatical rules. Now, we know in Pâli and Prâkrita words like Pasena-di or °ji Prasena-jit, Inda-(j)i = Indrajit, Assa-ji- Aiva-jit (Mahâvagga I, 23, 2), Nagga-(j)i Nagna-jit (or °cit), 12 tadi taḍit, 13 etc., and these and others leave not the slightest doubt that a Sanskrit word *vigada-bhrit should correspond to a Prâkrita *vigala-bhi and vigada-bhi. It is true that bhritya gives bhachcha in Pâli,14 but this is no serious objection, for r may give a, i and u in Prâkṛita15, and bhrt must undoubtedly in the analogy of the words mentioned above have become bhi. So I am fully convinced that sila vigaḍabhi is to be rendered by silâ* viga labhrit or* vigadambhrit, since we might as well read vigaḍambhi. But the compounds ending in bhrit seem mostly to exhibit the undeclined form of the first compositional member.
It remains now to attempt an explanation of vigala, and here I think the Jaina texts will help us. Verse I, 12 of the Uttaradhyayanasûtra, one of the oldest texts in the Jaina Canon runs thus:
puno'
mâ galiyasse va kasam vayanam ichchhe puno kasam va datṭhum âinne pâvagam parivajjae ||
9 Julien, I, 324; Beal, II, 25; Watters, II, 15.
10 Cf. Pischel, l. c. p. 724.
11 Scil. mahtyite, loo, absol.worship having been made'; Bühler, E. I. Vol. V. p. 4. takes it as mahtyitam, which seems to me difficult and rather unnecessary.
13 Cp. Pischel, Pkt. Gr. § 395.
12 Cp. J. A. 1911, p.
14 Cp. the well-known Komárabhacca-kumara-bhrtya, 8. B. E. XVII, 174 n.
15 Cp. here pahudi, pahuda for prabhṛti, prabhtta, Pischel, Pkt. Gr. § 218. And there really exsits viesan-bhi visva bhrt-in Uttaradhyayana III, 2.