Indian Antiquary Vol 45

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

Page 129

JULY, 1916]
EPIGRAPHIC NOTES AND QUESTIONS
121
differently. And I give hera my interpretation of the word for the consideration of the scholars, in order that they may take it for what it is worth. I take ayasa as an eyuivalent of the Sanskrit adyasya 'of the first'. The corruption of dya into yya is as natural as into jja. Thus in Asoka's Rook Edict VI we meet with uydnesu, uyanasi or uyingspi, all standing for udyâne or udyânshu. Adyasya must, therefore, have become awwassa ;' and as it is unusual in inscriptions to mark the double or assimilated consonants and as long a is never shown in Kharoshthî records, Ayyasa would be written as ayasa. Thus there can be no philological difficulty in taking ayasa uf & Kharoshthi record in a north-west frontier dialect as the equivalent of adyasya. The line may, therefore, be rendered into English thus :
"On the day 15 of the month of the first Åsha tha (in) the year 136."
Dr. Fleet, who is the best authority on Indian astronomical literature, says: "Now, at the time of this record, in A. D. 79-80 acoording to Dr. Marshall's opinion and my own and some three centuries before the introduotion of the Greek astronomy,--the Indian calendar was regulated by mean or uniform instead of true time. The intercalation of months was governed by a hard and fast rule. According to the Jyotish-Veda nga the fixed intercalated months (one half-way through the five-years cycle, and the other at the end of it) came next after ÅshAdha and Pausha." This fits here excellently; for, according to the astronomical system then prevalent there would be two Ashadhas. It was therefore, nucessary to specify in the Taxila soroll inscription which Ashâdha was meant. And this explains the propriety of cyasa (=ddyasya= of the first) qualifying 4 shadhasa.
The cate 136 of this record has been taken to refer to the Vikrama era and consequently as equivalent to A. D. 79. Now, who could have been the Mahardja Rajatirája Devaputra Khushna referred to in the inscription as reigning in this year? The monogram on the scroll is characteristic of the coins of only Kujula-Kadphises and Vima-Kadphises: Kanishka and his successors are, therefore, entirely out of question. But these titles are found conjoined only to the name of Kujula-Kadphises, as has been shown by Cunningham. Again, while the image of Buddha has been found on some coins of the latter, it is conspicuous by its absence on those of Vima-Kadphises. This shows that Kajula-Kadphises could alone be the Kushana prince intended in this inscription. He must, therefore, be supposed to be living in A. D. 79, and it seems tempting to suppose that he was the originator of the Saka era. Some scholars have recently looked upon Nahapana as the founder of this era, but this is impossible because during all the dates ranging from 41 to 46 that have been found for him he was a Kshatrapa and not Mahakshatrapa, clearly showing that he was a feudatory and could not therefore have started the era according to which his inscriptions are dated. The only paramount sovereign of this period was Kujula. Kadphises. This is indicated by his titles Maharaja Rajatirdia Devaputra. The probabilities are that he originated what is now known as the Saka era. The era does not seem to have finurished in the north where it was originally started but seems to have been
2 It is also probable in the present case that dya was first changed into jja, and then into yya according to the north-west frontier dialect where j is very often replaced by y.