गुप्त अभिलेख संग्रह (जे. एफ. फ्लीट - गुप्त सम्राटों एवं परवर्ती नरेशों के ऐतिहासिक पाषाण व ताम्रलेख)

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS; No. 71, PLATE XLI A. 275

solar day of the bright fortnight of the month Chaitra (March-April). It is a Buddhist in-
scription. And the object of it is to record the erection, by a certain Mahânâman,—
the second of that name mentioned in this inscription,—of a mansion of Buddha, i.e. a
Buddhist temple or monastery, at the Bôdhimanḍa, or, rather, within the precincts of it;
i.e. at the modern Bôdh-Gayâ.
With regard to the places mentioned in this inscription, Laṅkâ is, of course, one of
the most well-known names of Ceylon. And General Cunningham tells me that
Âmradvîpa, ‘the mango-island,’ is another of its names, derived from its resemblance in
shape to a mango. Bôdhimanḍa is the name of the miraculous throne under the bôdhi-
tree at Bôdh-Gayâ, also called the vajrâsana or ‘diamond-throne,’ on which Buddha and
his predecessors sat, when attaining bôdhi or perfect wisdom.¹ And Professor Childers, in
his Pâli Dictionary, added that he inferred that the term was also applied to the raised
terrace built under the bôdhi-tree within the precincts of any Buddhist temple, in imitation,
presumably, of Buddha's throne. This, rather than the throne itself, seems to be its
meaning in the present inscription.
The chief interest of this inscription, lies in the probability that the second
Mahânâman mentioned in it, is the person of that name who composed the more ancient
part of the Pâli Mahâvaṁsa, or history of Ceylon. If this identification is accepted, it
opens up a point of importance in the question of dates. On the one hand, there can be
no doubt that the date of the present inscription has to be referred to the Gupta era, with
the result of A.D. 588-89. On the other hand, from the Ceylonese records, Mr. Turnour
arrived at A.D. 459 to 477 as the period of the reign of Mahânâman's nephew (sister's
son) Dhâtusêna;² and it was during his reign that Mahânâman compiled the history.

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then considered that the same symbol occurs, in the record of the day, in the Khôh grant of the
Mahârâja Saṁkshôbha, No. 25, above; in line 24 of which (page 115) I accordingly read the solar
day as 29. Mr. Sh. B. Dikshit, however, has found, by actual calculation, that the thirteenth
lunar day of the bright fortnight of Chaitra, which is mentioned in line 2 f. of that record (page 114),
was the twenty-seventh solar day in the month. Accordingly, the symbol which we have there, in line
24, must be interpreted as 7; not 9.—On fuller consideration of the whole matter, with the help of
Mr. Sh. B. Dikshit's calculation, I find that, in the three passages, we are concerned with two separ-
ate symbols; not one and the same.—One is the symbol which is the third in the years of the present
inscription of Mahânâman, and the second in the record of the day in the Bhumarâ pillar inscription;
and I see no reason to alter my original opinion, that it is a rather straight and upright form of the
symbol for 9. A sign extremely like it occurs, it is true, in the date of the Môrbî grant (Ind. Ant.
Vol. II. p. 258, and Plate, line 19), where the record in words compels us to interpret it as 8; but it
is there a decimal figure, not a numerical symbol; and that record also comes from a far distant part
of the country; so that we are not bound to adopt the same interpretation in the present instance.—
The other symbol is the second in the record of the day in the grant of Saṁkshôbha. And an
examination of the lithograph (Plate xv B.) will shew, that it really differs from the symbol which I
interpre as through a slight mark below it, which, being a little detached from it, I took originally
to be a rust-mark, and not part of the symbol itself. Taking it now as part of the symbol itself, it
makes the symbol identical with, though in execution somewhat inferior to, the symbol for the day in
the present inscription of Mahânâman; and, accordingly, the symbol for the day here must now be
interpreted as 7; not as 8, which I took it to be in my original version of this inscription.—The same
symbol occurs also in lines 19 and 21 of the Nêpâl inscription of Jishṇugupta (Ind. Ant. Vol. IX. p.
172, and Plate); and it was Dr. Bhagwanlal Indraji's interpretation of it there as 8, which led me to
read it originally as 8 in the present instance.
¹ See, amongst other authorities, Beal's Buddhist Records of the Western World, Vol. II.
p. 116.
² See Turnour's Mahawanso, pp. ii. liv. lxii. 254 ff.; and Jour. Beng. As. Soc. Vol. VII. p. 922