Jainism Early Faith of Ashoka

Author(s): Edward Thomas
Publisher: Trubner and Company London

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BACTRIAN COINS AND INDIAN DATES.
series of twenty records the dates are confined to numbers below one hundred: they approach and nearly touch the end of a given century, in the 90 and 98; but do not reach or surpass the crucial hundred discarded in the local cycle.
The two inscriptions, Nos. 22, 23, from the same locality, dated, severally, Samvat 135 with the Indian month of Paushya, and Samvat 281, clearly belong to a different age, and vary from their associates in dedicatory phraseology, forms of letters, and many minor characteristics, which General Cunningham readily discriminated.?
INDO-SCYTHIAN INSCRIPTION8.
In the Indo-Páli Alphabet.
At Mathurd.
KANISHKA. Mahdrája Kanishka. Samvat 9.
[Kanishka. Samvat 28.]
[Huvishka. Samvat 33.]” HUVISHKA, Mahardja DEVAPUTRA Huishka. Hemanta, S. 39.
Mahárdja RÁJATIRÁJA DEVAPUTRA Huvishka. Grishma,
S. 47.5 Mahdrája Huvishka. Hemanta, S. 48. Maharaja Rájátirája DEVAPUTRA Vúsul deva). Varsha, S. 44. Maharaja Pásudeva. Grishma, 8. 83. Mahardja Rajatirdja, SHáni, Vasudeva. Hemanta, 8. 87. Raja Vasudeva. Varsha, S. 98.4
1 Arch. Rep. vol. i. p. 38.
2 These two dates are quoted from Gen. Cunningham's letter to the Athenæum of 29 April, 1876, as having been lately discovered by Mr. Growse, B.C.S.
s The 47th year of the Monastery of Huvishka..
4 I was at first disposed to infer that the use of the Indian months in their full development indicated a period subsequent to the employment of the primitive three seasons, but I find from the Western Inscriptions, lately published by Prof. Bhandarkar, that they were clearly in contemporaneous acceptance. While a passage in Hiouen Thsang suggests that the retention of the normal terms was in a measure typical of Buddhist belief, and so that, in another senso, the months had a confessed conventional significance.
"Suivant la sainte doctrine de Jou-laï (du Tatlıágata), une année se compose de trois saisons. Depuis le 16 du premier mois, jusqu'au 15 du cinquième mois, c'est la saison chaude. Depuis le 16 du cinquième mois, jusqu'au 15 du neuvième mois, c'est la saison pluvieuse (Varchas). Depuis le 16 de neuvième mois. jusqu'au 15 du premier mois, c'est la saison froide. Quelquefois on divise l'année en quatre saisons, savoir : le printemps, l'été, l'automne et l'hiver." _Hiouen Thsang, vol. ii. p. 63. The division into three seasons is distinctly non-Vedic.-Muir, vol. i. p. 13; Elliot, Glossary, vol. ii, p. 47.
" There ars two summers in the year and two harvests, while the winter intervenes between them.”—Pliny vi. 21; Diod. Sic. I. c. i.