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We can also accept the statement contained in the manuscript that the Nanda king was unsuccessful in his attempt, because Kalinga is said in Aśoka's thirteenth edict to have been avijita when he made his conquest. Mr. Jayaswal justly remarks that the stanzas cannot throughout refer to one and the same person, and that Aira was a designation used by a series of kings and princes. But he is certainly not right when he states that the second Aira was an enemy of Aśoka. Aśokasya mahāmittraḥ must mean a great friend of Aśoka, and what follows contains, so far as I can see, the information that this Aira, who was, or became, king of Kalinga, Utkalesvara, was advised by a deity to remove his capital to Khandagiri from Kosalā. I agree with Mr. Jayaswal that Kośalā denotes the capital of Mahākośala, and I also think that he is right in identifying the new capital with Tosali. According to the Dhauli version of the second detached edict of Aśoka a royal prince, kumāle, resided in Tosali, and if the information contained in the Oriya manuscript is trustworthy, we may infer that Aśoka had appointed an Aira as viceroy in Tosali, and that he became independent as Utkaleśvara, king of Kalinga. Khāravela, who was anointed in the third generation of his lineage, would accordingly have to be considered as the grandson of this Aira, and his expedition against the Magadha empire should be considered as an act of revenge for the devastations wrought by king Nanda in his unsuccessful attempt at subjugating Kalinga.
There still remain several passages in the Hathīgumpha inscription which cannot be satisfactorily explained. The materials at my disposal are not, however, sufficient for a thorough examination of all details. For the present I must be content at summing up the results of the above discussions:
There is no date in the Kharavela inscription, but it contains an important corroboration of the Jaina tradition about the Pățaliputra council and the impossibility of then recovering the whole canon.
The record contains two references to the Jaina era, which show that the reckoning from Māhavīra's Nirvāṇa was, in Khāravela's days, used even in the royal office. One of them further shows that the traditional date of the Nirvana in B.C. 527 cannot be right.
There is a reference to the Greek conqueror Demetrios, which makes it possible to settle the question about Khāravela's date within narrow limits,
तुलसी प्रज्ञा अंक 131
114
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