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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
250
OLD BRAHMI INSCRIPTIONS
regarded as an earthly representative of Indra or Mahendra. This is corro. borated by the royal title Imdarāja occurring in the concluding paragraph of the Hāthi-Gumphā text. The reading Bhikhurāja suggested by Mr. Jayaswal and others is out of the question. The elephants of Arga and Kalinga have been praised in the Artha-Sastra (II. 2.20) as those of the noblest breed. The Kurudbamma and Vessantara Jātakas (Fausböll, Nos. 276, 547) bear testimony to the fact that a kind of religious sanctity was attached by the peoples of India to state-elephants.
The possession of enormous wealth in the shape of a large amount of ready money, vast stores of food-stuffs, precious stones, rich apparels, horses, elephants and other live-stocks is a test of the high fortune and prosperity of a king overlord. Fortunately, the Hāthi-Gumpha text is not lacking in information on all these points.
First, as to ready money and solvency of His Majesty's government, we find that King Khāravela possessed a sufficiently large amount to be in a position to spend 35,00,000 pieces, in the very first year of his reign, to repair the capital of Kalinga (I. 2); to spend 1,00,000 pieces, in his fifth regnal year, to bring the canal near the Tanasuliya or Tanasuli road, into the capital (I. 6); to remit within the kingdom of Kalinya all taxes and duties in his sixth regnal year, the taxes and duties amounting to many hundred thousand pieces (I. 7); to spend some hundred thousand pieces, in his seventh regnal year, to organise a hundred kinds of pompous parade and to perform all ceremonies of victory (1. 8); to spend some hundred thousand pieces, in his eighth regnal year, to feast all sections of the people in Mathurā as well as in Kalinga (I. 9); to spend 38,00,000 pieces, in his ninth regnal year, to erect the "Great-victory Palace' (I. 10); to spend 1,00,000 pieces, in his tenth regnal year, to pay due homage to the memory of the former kings of Kalinga (I. 11); to spend 75,00,000 pieces, in his fourteenth regnal year, to erect certain religious edifices (I, 15); to carry out, in his eleventh regnal year, the costly work of reclamation of Pithuda-Pithu laga, which had become converted into a watery jungle of grass ([. 12); to excavate, in his thirteenth regnal year, as many as 117 caves on the Kumāri hill (I. 14); and, last but not the least, to finance, in bis second, fourth, eighth and twelfth regnal years, the expensive undertakings of military expeditions all over India (I. 3, 1. 5, I. 9, I. 13).
In this connexion, three points of importance deserve consideration : (1) that in the Hāthi-Gumphā records of Khāra vela's regral years, just the amounts, 35,00,000, 38,00,000 and 75,00,000, are mentioned without any indication as to what sort of money, Kāršāpaņa, Suvarņa or Satamānu,
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