Indian Antiquary Vol 47

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

Page 240

224
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(AUGUST, 1918
him, not with the earliest ruler of the Nanda Dynasty, but with the earliest king of the Pauranic list whose name contains or is supposed to Coutain the adjunct Nanda, i.e. Nandivardhana. We leave out of consideration, for the moment, the fact that the name is given as Nandivardhana in all the authentic Puranas, that the corrupt Bhavishya Purana alone gives the name as Nanda vardhana, that none of the Puranas count him or his successor among the Nanda kings and that there is no justification therefore to dub him as Nanda I. as Mr. Banerji has done on the authority of Mr. Jayaswal. We take for granted that Nandavardhana,or Nandivardhana, of the disunagadynasty was on the throne in 465 B.C. (taking the later date). This would place Ajátasatru's reign, according to Mr. Jayagwal's calculation, between 568 and 534 B.C., or rather earlier, as we may justly suppose that king Nandivardhana was for some years on the throne of Magadha before he could excavate a canal in Kalinga. Now this not only runs counter to the present accepted view about the date of the death of Buddha but is also opposed to the orthodox view, accepted by Mr. Jayaswal, that the Buddha died in the 8th year of AjAtasatru's reign (see, e... the Synchronistic table of Mr. Jayaswal in Appendix C of his paper on the Saisunaka and Maurya Chronology, etc., published in J BORS. Sept. 1915. Reprint p. 49). The date of the HAthigumpha inscription, as interpreted by Mr. Jayaswal and Mr. Banerji, thus upsets the accepted date of the Gautama Buddha and therewith the whole chronological system based upon it. Such far-reaching conclusions can be accepted only on the basis of clear and positive evidence. But as has been seen above, the line 16 of the record which is the keystone of the whole structure is far from being clear and positive.
Attention may be drawn in this connection to the ways in which idioms expressing dates have been interpreted by these scholars. We have three such expressions, viz., li vasa-sata in line 6, terasa-rasa sata in line 11, and the alleged sathi. tasa-sata in line 16. They have taken the first two in the sense of 300 and 1300 respectively, but have interpreted the last as 100, while it is clear that, to be consistent, they should have explained it as 6,000. According to the usual meaning the first two expressions ought to be taken in the sense of
113 and 103, respectively. These would upset many theories started by Mr. Jayaswal. Thus, for example, there would be no basis for the suggestion that we have in line Il a reference to the Kalinga hero who flourished at the time of Mahabharata war, or that there was a careful chronicle in Orissa at the time of Khêravela which could go back 1,300 years. But by far the most important results would follow if we take ti-vusa-sata to mean 103 on the analogy of the so-called sathi-vasa-sata. For then we have to place a Nanda King in Kalinga in the year 54 of the Maurya era, and this by itself would go far to prove that there is something wrong in the system of chronology adopted by the authors of the paper
Mr. Banerji has maintained that even apart from the question of the true reading of line 16, Dr. Fleet's views about the date of the record were grossly inconsistent in themselves. In this I cannot follow him, and it is but due to the memory of the illustrious scholar that his case should be fairly represented. As shown by Mr. Banerji (p. 494) Dr. Fleet concluded from some details in line 11 that the eleventh year of Khåravela fell in the 113th year after the conquest of Kalinga by Asoka, and that Khåra vela therefore ascended the throne of Kalinga, 111 years after the anointment of Asoka. Mr. Banerji then adds, "Now, accord ing to Dr. Luiders, Khåravela caused an aqueduct, that had not been used for 103 years since king Vanda or since the Nanda kings, to be conducted into the city, in the 5th year of his reign. This view is also shared by the late Dr. Fleet." (P. 494). Is becomes easy of course to show that the two views are incompatible with each other. The fect, however, is that there is no reason to suppose that the particular view of Dr. Luders was also shared by the late Dr. Fleet. His published writings on the subject, referred to by Mr. Banerji, contain no such thing and Mr. Banerji should have given full reference before advancing such a charge against the late lamented scholar. He was too critical a scholar for such inconsistencies and I maintain that his view, so far es it goes, is perfectly consistent in itself. It may be mentioned in this connection that Mr. Banerji has fallen into similar orror in his criticism of Lüder's viev. Khåravela, aceording to it, would not be four years of age, as Mr. Banerji maintains in l. 22. p. 496, but 11 years of age when Aboka died.
R. C. MAJUMDAR.