________________
CHAPTER 33
INSCRIPTIONS
THE EARLIEST IMPORTANT EPIGRAPHIC RECORD IN THE HISTORY OF JAINISM in east India, which was the birth-place of the faith, is the Hathi-gumphā caveinscription on the Udayagiri hills near Bhubaneswar, which says, inter alia, that the Cedi king Kharavela (second or first century B.C.) brought back to his capital the Kalinga-Jina that the Nanda king had taken away t Other inscriptions on the same hill say that the ruler and other royal personages of his family excavated cave-dwellings at the place for Jaina monks." Two inscriptions assignable to the same period from Pabhosa in Alahabad District refer to the excavation of a cave-dwelling for the Kåśyapiya Arabamtas (i.e. Jaina monks who were followers of Kaśyapa or Vardhamāna) by Aşādhasena.
Mathură in Uttar Pradesh was a centre of Jainism in the early centuries of the Christian ora. In fact, an area called the Karkali-tilá of the city originally contained a number of Jaina structures including a Jaina stupa. Several images and architectural pieces found in the area are inscribed. An inscription
te 301A) on an important sculpture of this group, with a lady attended by a pair of women, says that in the year 72 of Mahaksatrapa Sodasa, this piece was donated by a certain Amohini. If the year 72 is ascribed to the Vikrama era, the date of the sculpture is A.D. 15. The lady in the sculpture is identified as queen Trišala, the mother of Tirthankara Vardhamāna.? Another beautiful sculpture with an inscription dated in Saka year 54 or A.D. 132 represents the goddess Sarasvati - perhaps the earliest representation of the goddess. A
1 D.C. Sircar, Select Inscriptions bearing on Indian History and Civilization, I, Calcutta, 1965, pp. 213 ff.
See above, chapter 7.--Editor.) * Epigraphla Indica, II, 1893-94, pp. 242-43. * See above, p. 10, n. 4.--Editor.]
See above, chapter 6.--Editor.) • H. Lüders, List of Brahmi Inscriptions, 1912, no. 59.
* V.S. Agrawala, A Short Guide book to the Archaeological Section of the Provincial Museum, Lucknow, Allahabad, 1940, p. 5.
• Lüders, op. cit., no. 54. [See above, p. 67 and plate 20.-Editor.)
