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Taxila Inscription of the year 136
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
Sir john marshall's interpretation of ayasa in the Taxila silver scroll inscription of the year 136 as “ of Azes ” has been the subject of adverse criticism by some of the most eminent antiquarians since the publication of the record in 1914. The latest is by Professor Sten Konow in the Epigraphia Indica, xiv, p. 286. Professor Konow revives two of the objections to Sir John's explanation : (1) “ the word (ayasa) could hardly be the name of a king, because no royal title is used ” (2) “ if ayasa were really the name of a king, it would place the inscription in the reign of this king, who would then most likely have to be identified with the Khushana mentioned in 1. 3. ” I hope to show in this note that these objections are not as insuperable as they are supposed to be.
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1920
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page 320 note 1 Mr. Panday reads orājya. But the sign of e-kara before jy is clear on the heliozincograph. Mr. Panday's translation, “ (on) the 15th day of the bright half of Kārttika, Lakshmaṇasēna samvat 83 expired ” (JBORS. 1918, p. 280), is wrong ; atīta goes with rājyē and not with saṁvat. Kielhorn, on the assumption that the Lakṣmaṇasena-saṁvat began with the beginning of the reign of Lakṣmaṇasena in a.d. 1119, translates No. 2 as “ on the 12th of the dark half of Vaiśākha of the year 74 since the (commencement of the) reign, (now) passed, of the illustrious Lakshmaṇasēnadēva, on a Thursday ” (Ind. Ant. xix, p. 2). But in his synchronistic table for Northern India, a.d. 400–1400 (appended to Ep. Ind. viii), column 7, Kielhorn shows Ballālasēna, father of Lakṣmaṇasēna, reigning in a.d. 1169, evidently in accordance with the date of the compilation of the Dānasāgara of Ballālasēna as given in the manuscripts of that work (Eggeling's Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the India Office Library, p. 545). Sir R. G. Bhandarkar notices a manuscript of the Adbhutasāgara which, according to the introductory stanzas of the work, was begun by Ballālasēna in Śaka year 1090 = a.d. 1168, and was finished after his death by his son Lakṣmaṇasēna (Report on the Search for Sanskrit Manuscripts during 1887–88 and 1890–91, p. lxxxv). In the printed edition of the Adbhutasāgara (Benares, 1905)Google Scholar the date of the commencement of the work is given as Śaka year 1089 = a.d. 1167 (p. 4), and on p. 203 it is stated that the first year of the reign of Ballālasēna fell in the Śaka year 1082= a.d. 1160. So the tradition recorded by Abul Fazl in his Akbarnāma and relied on by Keilhorn that the era of Lakṣmaṇasēna is counted from that king's accession in a.d. 1119 is without historical basis, and we need not twist the meaning of expressions like Lakṣmaṇasēnasy= ātīta-rājyē saṁ[vat] in the light of that tradition.
page 322 note 1 Kielhorn's Northern List, No. 454, and the two Sārnāth image inscriptions of the time of Kumāra Gupta (G.E. 154) and Budhagupta (G.E. 157). See Report of the Superintendent of Hindu and Buddhist Monuments, Northern Circle, for 1914–15, pp. 6–7. In the two latter records the name of the era is specified as Guptānām, “ of the Guptas.” In Kielhorn's No. 454 the wording bhupatau cha Budhagupte, “ while Budhagupta is the reigning king,” leaves no room for doubt about the sense.