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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
NOTES
195 Magadha who is supposed to have been a pre-Mauryan Indian monarch and a contemporary of King Aira of Utkala.
A presamption without convincing proofs may be utterly devoid of truth in sober history. In order to maintain (1) that Parthalis or Parlualis in the Indika was a Greek spelling of Elea-prustara or Prastara in the Sanskrit verses, (2) that Kiny Nanda of Magadha mentioned as a temporary of King Aira of Utkala was a pre-Mauryan Nanda king, and (3) that Parthalis or Prastara was the capital of Kalinga when King Aira of Utkala reigned there in the days of Chandragupta Maurya when Megasthenes was in India, one must be sure (1) that Parthalis or Partualis is mentioned in the Indika as a tract, like Eka-prastara, around the Khandagiri, and (2) that there is mention of any Aira King of Utkala or Kalinga as a contemporary of a Nanda king of Magadha who was a precursor, á posteriori, of Chandragupta Maurya. But nothing is surer than that one cannot be sure about these two points. We are entirely in the dark as to who, among the kings of Kalinga, were contemporaries of the pre-Asokan Maurya kings and pre-Mauryan Nanda kings of Magadha.
In Khāravela's inscription (I. 12), we have mention of a place founded by the former kings of Kalinga and known by the name of Pithudaga or Pithudu, which had become, in 113 years, a watery jungle of grass.
The city of Kalinga could not have been very far from the Panasuliya or Tanasulī road wherefrom the canal opened out by King Nanda 103 years back was brought into it by King Khāravela in the fifth year of his reign. The reading Tanusuliya is certain. The plaster casts and estampages of the Hāthi-Gumphā inscription leaves no chance for the reading of the second letter as u. If the inscribed name might be read as Tausuliya or Tausalī, it could have been easily equated with Tosali. But read as Tanasuliya or Tanusuli, it remains to be seen how the name could be equated with Tosali (passim). We have noted that tana, the first member of the compound, occurs in one of the verses of the Mahāvamsa as the opposite of mahā: Muhāsivu, Sivu, Tanusivu. And suliya, the second member of the compound, must be treated either as an equivalent in an eastern dialect of the Pali suriya, or of the Sk. sūryya, or as a form of suli conjoined with the suffix yu. The first alternative is less likely for the reason that the general tendency of the dialect of the Hathi-Gumphā inscription is to replace l-sound by r-sound, unless it be supposed that the name has been retained as it was locally pronounced. If Tanasuliya be regarded as an equivalent of Tanasuriya, it must be rendered in English : "the Little Sun-temple (road).” If, on the other hand, it be regarded as a form of/
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