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Kosvigholnen via Lillerand Aug 10, 1937.
My dear Vijaya Indra;
Many thanks for your letter of the 15th ult. You have evidently not received the letter I wrote about a month ago about mentioning of Jaina saints in Brahmi and Kharoshthi in scription. I shall therefore repeat that there is absolutely no trace in Kharoshthi records. And it is absolutely certain that Mahapana's name does not occur in the Mathura Lion Capital inscriptions. That would in itself hardly have been impossible, because the Lion Capital is older than Nahapāna. There is further not the slightest support for the assumption that Bhumaka was the father of Nahapana. The records about Bhu maka are his coins which are no doubt older than these of Nahapana but the latter's coins and inscriptions no where men tion his father and it is absolutely unwarranted to assume that he was the son of Bhumaka. You will have noticed that the form Bhumaka is rather barbaric and it has been assumed I believe rightly that it is a clumsay translation of a foreign name. Now we know that the Western Kshetrapas were Sakas, i. e. Iranians and we know that the saka word for Bhumi was ysma. I therefore think that I was right in assuming that Bhūmaka is a barbaric rendering of the name Ysamotika, and Ysamotika (not Ghsamotika, which is a wrong reading) was the father of Cashtana, who succeeded to the position of Kshatrpa and mahakshatrapa after the defeat of Nahapana by the Andhras, when the Sakas were able to recover something of their last power. Personally belive that this recovery was the result of Kanishka's appearing on the Indian stage, about Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat www.umaragyanbhandar.com
