Indian Antiquary Vol 47

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

Page 268

252
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTOBER, 1918
Let us clear the ground before we proceed with the explanation. Let us consider the data supplied by the text, so that the problem may be clearly grasped. The data are four. (1) On a certain day of Ashddha the Yaksha saw the Cloud to whom he entrusted a message to be conveyed to his beloved. This day is to be fixed by us bearing in mind the two readings and T. (2) Sravana was proximate to that day. (3) The curse was to come to an end on the eleventh Tithi of the bright fortnight of Kartlika. (4) Lastly, the period from the day on which the cloud was sent to the last day of the curse was four months. These data are given and we are required (a) first to determine the day on which the message was delivered to the Cloud by the Yaksha and (b) secondly to prove the porrectness of one of the two or both readings accordingly.
Here it is best to proceed from the conclusion to the beginning. We are told that the curse was to end on the eleventh Tithi of the bright fortnight of Karttika. If we count four months backwards from this day, we see that the day on which the Yaksha saw the Cloud must have been the eleventh Tithi of the bright fortnight of Ashadha.
This, however, apparently lands us in a great perplexity. Neither of the readings gya and t o fits in with our calculation and we know of no third reading. The word AIETE may mean either on the first day' or on one of the first days' of Ashâdha, but the eleventh Tithi of the bright fortnight of Ashadha is not the first day of the month, nor any stretch in the meaning of the word na makes it 'one of the first days' of the month. I think it is too much to take the first day of Ashadha to extend beyond the first ten days. In neither case, again, can Sravana be said to be pratydsanna to that day. Similarly, the eleventh day of the bright fortnight of Ashdaha cannot be the prasamadivasa Ashadha in either of the two senses wbialı we have explained above. Under these circumstances, only two alternatives seem possible; either the expression e ATETT should not be construed too literally or the poet should be taken to have overlooked the inconsistency. Is there no getting over this dilemma ?
I think there is one way out of the difficulty thus created. As has just been made clear the difficulty arises because the eleventh Tithi of the bright fortnight of Ashddha cannot be made the प्रथमदिवस or प्रशमदिवस of Ashadha and पत्यास to Sravana. This difficulty is bound to remain insurmountable so long as the arrangement of months is taken to be what Fleet calls southern or Amanta (ending with the conjunction ') arrangement in which the bright fortnight precedes the dark fortnight of the month. If however we proceed on the basis of the Parnimânta (ending with the Full Moon') arrangement, the difficulty will be seen at once to vanish; at least one reading, 74, will be found to give intelligible sense. The eleventh Tithi of the bright fortnight of Ashdd ha can then be taken to be a YHTE in the sense that it is one of the last days of Ashddha because the bright would then be the second fortnight of the month and only four days after the next month Sravana would commence. Thus 8-dvana would also be Pralydsanna to that day. In this manner the lines quoted in the beginning of this note can be satisfactorily reconciled and explained. And looked at from this point of view, the reading Hy will have to be preferred to yo;
* See Gupta Inscriptions : Introduction, p. 70.