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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
144
OLD BRĀHMĪ INSCRIPTIONS Dr. Bhagavanlal Indraji's note in Actes du Sixieme congres International des Orientalistes, Part III, p. 137. And for the discussion of different theories about the origin and explanations of the form of the Nandipada symbol, he is referred to Dr. Fleet's paper on the Sohgaura copper-plate inscription which he published in JRAS, 1907, pp. 529-32.
Regarding the second of these two symbols, it remains to be seen whether its name Nandipada was suggested in the Buddhist inscription from its external resemblance with the bull's foot-mark or from some other circumstance. There is something to be said for the second alternative. The Cullakālinga-Jātaka (Fausböll's No. 301) says that the tutelary god of Kalinga was represented in the shape of "a white bull," and that of Assaka in the shape of "a black bull.” Dr. Indraji is right to say that the Buddhists, giving it the name Nandipaila, meant to represent it as a “ Bull symbol," and not as a mere “foot-mark of a bull."
One tree-symbol marks the beginning of the inscription of Kamma and Khiņā in the Snake Cave (No. VIII), and another tree symbol that of the inscription of the Town-judge Bhūti in the Tiger Cave (No. IX). These two symbols are just two different varieties of the fourth symbol in the Hāthi-Gumphā inscription. The inscription in the Tiger Cave has, indeed, a second symbol at its end. It is again a Svastika mark carved in a somewhat different form. These three symbols appear as represented in the following table :
7 8
5
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