Srinivasan Newly Discovered Inscribed Mathurā Sculptures of Probable Doorkeepers

8/12/2019 Srinivasan Newly Discovered Inscribed Mathurā Sculptures of Probable Doorkeepers

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/srinivasan-newly-discovered-inscribed-mathura-sculptures-of-probable-doorkeepers 1/8

Newly Discovered Inscribed Mathurā Sculptures of Probable Doorkeepers, Dating to theKṣatrapa Period

Author(s): Doris Meth Srinivasan and Lore SanderReviewed work(s):Source: Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 43 (1990), pp. 63-69Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia Society

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111210 .

Accessed: 24/01/2013 19:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Hawai'i Press and Asia Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend

access to Archives of Asian Art.

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uhp

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asiasoc

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111210?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111210?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asiasoc

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uhp



Newly Discovered InscribedMathur? Sculptures

of ProbableDoorkeepers, Dating to the

Ksatrapa Period

Doris Meth Srinivasan

George Washington University

Epigraphic Analysis by Lore Sander

Museumf?r Indische Kunst, Berlin

It is not every day that adiscovery

occurs which

challenges the art historian to think anew about the

methodology of the discipline. But thediscovery

in 1987of two sandstone statues inMathur? District has done

just that. The Mathur? School of art is of course one of

the best documented, and that documentation does not

betraythe same sort of uncertainties

regardingthe

chronology of stylistic developments,as does, for

example, scholarshipon Gandharan art.

Perhaps it is for

this reason that the statues described below are somewhat

unsettling. They make us realize the limits of our

knowledge. Were it not for the fortunate chance that

these statues are inscribed and thereforesusceptible

to

epigraphic analysis, their interpretation, based onstyle

andiconography,

would have oeen, I am afraid, quite

different.In

May 1987 two sandstone statues invery good

condition came out of theground

of Bharna Kalan, 32

kilometers northwest of Mathur? on the Govardhan

Chchata Road. Both statues are life-size and stand on

bases that are inscribed. Theywere soon

deposited in the

Mathur? Museum, where I saw them inJune 1987.1

Both figuresaremales. The one with the sword (Fig. 1)

is 6 feet 6 inches; that is, the figure is 5 feet 7 inches and

its base is 11 inches. The male faces frontally; he stands

with both feet planted firmlyon the

ground, althoughthere is a

slight shift of weight onto his right leg. His

oval face has sharply chiseled features: the eyes look

outward under heavy lids; the nose is straight and the

nostrils are defined; the lips relax into the faintest of

smiles and thejaw

is somewhat raised and resolute. Most

of his hair is gathered up and tied underneath the turban.

The turban's bulbous portion and large knot are on the

right side of the figuresforehead. Some of the hair which

escapes the turban falls in thick locks at the nape of the

neck(Fig. ib). The dhoti he wears is tied just below the

slightly rounded abdomen. It is secured bya

large girdle,

gathered into thin folds, and knotted in the center. The

ends of the girdleare decorated with large tassels that

fall between the legs. A section of the dhoti is also

gatheredinto narrow

pleats,seen

just below the tassels.

The end of the dhoti lies softly on the left thigh,in a

series of folds havinga

rippled edge. The figure wears

a scarf, best seen in the back (Fig. ib).It is pulled into

adiagonal strip of gathered cloth which drapes over both

arms before opening into a cascade of folds in both front

and back. Evidently the scarf, dhoti, and girdlearemade

of a cloth sufficiently thin to permit of such fine

gathering.2

The man's upper chest is decorated with two neck

laces. One is tied close to the neck and lies flat; it hasfloral designs. The other is longer and looped. It seems

to be composed of six strands held together byrec

tangular clasps.The

figure'stwo arms are ornamented

with armlets and bracelets. The right hand clenches the

handle of a sword resting against the right side of the

torso; the upper part of the sword is now broken. The

left arm is bent and the hand rests at thewaist; it seems

to hold the base ofsomething.

Whatever itwas, it should

have originally touched the left side of the figure because

abreakage point

remains there.Perhaps

theobject

was

the figure of a child or diminutive person. A second cen

tury b.c. relief from Hariparvat Til?, Mathur? (Fig. 2)shows a small figure

on a base held in the left hand ofa personage clad and ornamented quite like the Bharna

Kalan figure. The small figure touches the personage in

the relief precisely where the Bharna Kalan male snows

the breakage point.The second statue is 6 feet 5 inches tall (Fig. 3). The

base is 10 inches, that is 1 inch less than the base of the

first statue, leaving the figures themselves of identical

height. The dress and ornamentation of the second figurealso closely resembles the first, and the visual impressionis that they

are related. The second male is distinguishedfrom the first; he wears a decorated turban knotted in

the center. The turbaned head is surrounded byan ogee

shape having flame-like incisions all over the back and

along the outer edge of the front (Fig. 3b). The left arm

is broken; the breakageat the hip indicates that the left

hand rested on the hip and held awater bottle. The lower

part of the rightarm is also damaged; it probably

ex

tended into space since there are no contactpoints

on

either the right side of the torso or the right upper arm.

The strut supporting the elbow would also indicate that

the arm made some kind of open gesture. It is of course

nolonger possible

to determine whether the right hand

also held an attribute.

The two Bharna Kalan images appear to have been

carved byamaster

sculptor who delighted in depictingcloth as it draped around amodeled form, and who was

able toconvey the tactile

realityof the tautness of skin,

the gathers of folds, the

weight

of a stance, and the

raised tilt of a head. Since both images display verysimilar sculptural qualities

as well as similar dress,

stance, ornamentation, and size, it is to be inferred that

they were carved by the same hand probably in responseto one commission.

It is immediately apparent that the figurestrace their

ancestry back to the Parkham Yaksa (Fig. 4). The over

8 foot Yaksa, frontally conceived and standing with the

weighton the right leg, is dressed and ornamented in a

manner similar to the Bharna Kalanimages.

Even the

shallow zigzag incisions indicating creases in the back of

the Yaksa's dhoti are identical to those on the back of

the sword-holding male (compare Fig.ibwith Fig. 4B).

However, the block-like rigidity and archaic treatment

of the drapery and corporeal forms, and their in

terrelation, are not echoed in the Bharna Kalanimages.

The sculptural advances of the latter belong to a different

age. ...

It is therefore instructive to compare the images with

less archaic sculptures from Uttar Pradesh and sur

roundingareas. The Noh Yaksa (Fig. 5) does not show

stylistic developments much in advance of the Parkham

Yaksa. What remains of the Palwal Yaksa also shows a

63

This content downloaded on Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:37:45 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions






heavy-set bust decorated with necklaces that arerigid

and that fail to relate to the surface of the skin (Fig. 6).The now headless Pratapgarh Yaksa exhibits more

gradually rounded forms especially in the abdominal area

and in the torque and folds of the girdle (Fig. 7). But the

block-like shape of the body and its stiff outline recall

the Bharhut style. The Vidi's? Yaksa nolonger preserves

the stiff outline (Fig. 8). The image ismore relaxed and

conveysa

greatersense of

plasticity.Pramod Chandra

dates the image to the second half of the second century

b.c. because the modeling has a feeling for the soft andresilient surface of the flesh, and because the contours

of the ornamentation are in advance of those found either

in the Parkham or the Bharhut Yaksas. SusanHuntington

puts the Vidi's? Yaksa at 100 b.c.James

Harleassigns

the

piece to the first century b.c.3 Although there is not

complete agreement on the date of the Vidis? Yaksa, all

three scholars would agree that the image is bracketed

between the second centuryb.c.

sculpturessuch as the

Bharhut and Pratapgarh Yaksas and the carvings of Sanc?,

stupaI.

It should be possibleto determine whether these

brackets are also useful in setting the relative date of the

Bharna Kalanimages.

A usefulcomparison

to the Bharna

Kalan statues is the Yaksa or Guardian on the northpillar

of the eastern torana at Sanc? stupa I (Fig. 9A). Certain

details are similar, such as the turbantype?especially

the cone-shaped knot?and the rows of pleating between

thelegs. However, the Mathur? carver

surelytook

greater delight, and had greater proficiency, in renderingthe beauty of draped cloth. He did not, however, have

as deft anunderstanding of the

figurein space as did the

carver of the Guardian on thepillar

of the west torana

at Sanc? stupa I, and this despite the latter beinga relief

(Fig. 9b), and the former free-standing images. True, the

Mathur? artist may not have wished to give his figuresa

pliant contrapposto posture, but nevertheless hisfigures

assume amore cautious stance whencompared

to the easy

grace of the Guardian on the west torana, usuallydated

to the first half of the first century a.d. No linear stylistic

Erogression

is to be implied, however. Archaisms cannot

e discounted, forexample,

in Kus?na art. Kus?na di

vinities do not as a rule have bends in the body, causingKus?na deities, such as the so-called Bhiksu Bala's

"Bodhisattva" of the year 3 of Kaniska, to retain the

stocky, rigidlook reminiscent of the Sunga Yaksas.

On the basis of the brief stylistic survey it appears that

the Bharna Kalan images could date from the second partof the first century

b.c. onward. A fewiconographie

comparisonscould favor a b.c. date. The type of bulbous

turban is seen on other first centuryb.c.

figures,such as

the Sanc? I east toranafigure,

or the head on aBodh Gay?lotus medallion, where the distinctive

cone-shapedknot

is also present (Fig. 10). The necklaces have toolong

a

historyto be useful as

chronological indicators. The

triple-hooped earringsare also worn

by the Parkham

YaKsa (Fig. 4). A Mathur? male figure of the beginningof the Christian era wears a

two-hooped variety.4 Triple

hoops with striations decorate the ears of a N?ga on aterracotta

fragmentfrom the upper phase of the Kaniska

periodat Sonkh.5

If, based on the above, we were to consider the Bharna

Kalan images aspossibly Yaksa figures belonging

to the

latter partof the first century b.c., we would be

quite

wrong in light of the pal?ographie evidence. Just as the

64

Parkham Yaksa has an inscription incised around its feet

on thepedestal,

so do these twofigures

have Brahm?

characters incised in the sameplace:

Figure with the Sword (87.145)

Right side (Fig. ha)1.

amatyena prati [h?r] (e) [na]6. . . ?

2. . .(?) [jayagh] (o) [s] (ena)

. . ....[to] pra7

Onlyone Aksara, perhaps

no is preserved in the third line

underneath the scanty remains ofgho.

Left side (Fig. iib)Scratches in one line (see analysis below).

Figure with Flaming Aureole (87.146)

Right side (Fig. I2a)1.

(ao [m] (a)ty [e]na pratih?re2.

[na]. . . .

jayaghosena3. [bh] (aga) [v] (a) to8? [gn] isa9pra [t] i [m] (?)10

left side (Fig. 12b)i.

[ka] rit?11 p [r?] yamt?m [a] ga [ya]10Diacritical marks:

( )Aksara restored

[ ] uncertain reading. . traces of an

undecipheredAksara

Translation: Bythe minister, the Pratih?ra6 . . .

jayaghosa an

image

of the holy Agniwas caused to be

made. The fires (?)may be pleased

Analysis: The reading is based on seven black-and

white photos of the incised portions.12 The poor and faint

remains of the three-line inscription of the right side of

87.145 (the Figurewith the Sword) show that originally

the lines of this inscription werelonger and contained

more text than those on the parallel side of 87.146 (the

Figure with the Flaming Aureole), which is in amuch

better state of preservation.While it is not at all sure

if the left side or 87.145 was inscribed?only scratches of

uncertainmeaning

are to be seen?a one-lineinscription

can be decipheredon 87.146 which is the continuation

of the third and last line on the right side. The inscriptions

begin with the samewording. The first word amatyena

is clearly readable in 87.145, while in 87.146 only ?tyenais sure. From there on the

inscription 87.146 is better

preserved; pratih?re can be read without difficulty. It

appears very faintly also in 87.145, in the first line. After

pratih?r. (-e is not discernible) the reading of this in

scription is uncertain. The first Aksara of the second line

of 87.146 looks at first sight like capital A. But the stone

is eroded around theAksara, and the small vertical stroke

is not curved as in A. Therefore Iprefer

to read the

Aksara as na, which is alsoexpected.

Even in the washed

out inscription of 87.145 the horizontal stroke of na is

discernible. More puzzlingare the two

followingAksaras.

Theycannot form a

completeword in the in

strumental case. Do they belongto the name

jayaghosa?Could the name of the pratihar? have been Mah?

jayaghosa? Also the inscription in 87.145 does not help.In this inscription the name

Jayaghosenacan be detected

onlyat the beginning of line 2with the help of 87.146.

The three horizontal strokes of ja appear first, the secondand the third stroke of the tripartite ya are certain, and

of gh (no trace of a vowel sign) only the flat base is to

be seen; sa is washed out but sure.Merely

scratches

remain of the following Aksaras. At the end of the stone,a faint to is followed by

a clear pra, but both Aksaras are

placed onlya bit lower than the first line. On the basis







of the better preserved inscription 87.146, they may be

restored tobhagavatopratim?, and therefore I tend to put

them into the second line. The third line of 87.145 should,

accordingly, begin with ?tim?, butnothing

is preserved.If the third line had the same

lengthas the other two,

itmay well be that the inscription ended here and that

the left side remained uninscribed. Because the two

inscriptions prove that the two male figuresare a

donation of one and the sameperson, the minister and

high official (perhaps the head of the guards of the city

gate6) named . . .jayaghosa, it ismost probable that the

figures formed apair of doorkeepers.

Accordingto the script the inscriptions should be dated

to the Ksatrapa or very early Kus?na period. Subscribed

-y-has still itsM?trk? shape and themiddle stroke of the

M?trk? is somewhat prolongated:ra is incised rather long

and slightly curved; the right part of ha is very short,therefore it looks similar to pa; ma has got a flat base.

All that speaks in favor of the Ksatrapaera. The char

acteristic da ismissing.13

The language is a sanskritized Prakrit, which pointstoward the Kus?na period. In Ksatrapa inscriptions

Prakrit formsprevail. Compare,

forexample,

the

Ksatrapa "inscriptionson

twenty-sixbricks and

brickbats from the second Ganeshr? mound, now in the

Mathur? Museum,"14 where the Prakrit word for

minister amaca isused and not the mixed Sanskrit/Prakritform amatya (with short ma\) as in our

inscription 87.145,on the right side. Another item for dating the inscriptioninto the Ksatrapa

era is the use of the past participlek?rita, which

accordingto G.

Bhattacharya11was re

placed by different forms of the verb pratistha in the

Kus?nainscriptions.

The inscriptional evidence, leading to the iden

tification of the imagesas

doorkeepers is corroborated

by sculpture in situ. On either side of vih?ra 4 at

Pitalkhora, Maharashtra, stand doorkeepers (Fig. 13).The

date of the vih?ra is set at the late second toearly first

century b.c.by J. Harle, a date which tallies with the

onegiven by Susan Huntington. Vidya Dehejia assigns

it to the mid-first century b.c.15 The Pitalkhora door

keepersare as tall as the entrance

they guard. Their largesize is just one feature they share with the pair from

Bharna Kalan, but there are others as well. The

Pitalkhora doorkeepers also wearlarge three-hooped

earrings,flat-collared necklaces, dhotis, and turbans; the

general shape and tilt of the turban of the right door

keeper echoes that of the sword-holding male from

Bharna Kalan. Instead ofcarrying

a sword asweapon,

the Pitalkhora doorkeepers carry javelins and shields.

Their fringed tunics over the dhotis are also distinctive

and are not seen elsewhere (are theycoats of mail?). The

main point to be gleaned from the Pitalkhora doorkeepers, for the present context, is that the two Bharna Kalan

images could well serve the same function as the

sculptures from Pitalkhora.

In conclusion, the most likely possibility is that the

Bharna Kalanimages

are apair

ofdoorkeepers.

One can

be identified asAgni: this is 87.146. It now becomes clear

why the head of thisfigure

is surrounded bya

flamingaureole. The water bottle is also a characteristic attribute

of Agni (cf. Mathur? Museum no. 2883). The second

figurecannot be precisely identified. Both date some

where between theKsatrapa

and very earlyKus?na ages,

with greater leanings toward theKsatrapa age. Probably

they stood on either side of the entrance of a shrine of

the same date. Since one of the guardians isAgni, the

shrine ismore likely to be Hindu than either Buddhistor

Jain.16

The fact that there are no extant Hindu shrines in

Mathur? from this period cannot be a serious deterrent.

In the first place there is theMor? Well inscription from

theKsatrapa period,

which refers to a stone shrine

housing images of the Pancav?ras of the Vrsni clan.17

There is also inscriptional evidence from the Kus?na

period mentioninga

temple complex to honor

Mahesvara, that is Siva.18 In the secondplace,

archi

tectural fragments from the Kus?na period exist. Some

of these fragments have been reconstructed by Ulrich

Wiesner to demonstrate the types of Mathur? portalframes associated with shrines of theKus?na period. The

earliest one Wiesner has reconstructed cannot be

assignedto any religion

on the basis of the decoration

on the fragment. It is a fragment of a lintel decoratedwith a row of worshippers carrying flowers; the project

ing part has aflying figure and an open flower (Fig. 14).19

A somewhat later lintelfragment,

on which Professorvan Lohuizen-de Leeuw had already found Gandharan

influences, shows "a row of Buddhas and a devotee on

theright.

"20These reconstructions can

helpus to

imagine

how the Bharna Kalan doorkeepers mighthave looked

at the sides of an entrance of a shrine, probablyto aHindu

god, and likely to date to the third quarter of the first

centurya.d.

Itmust be clear from the foregoing that without the

inscriptional evidence Iwould not have arrived at this

conclusion. Although Imight have hesitated to call the

figures yaksas,Iwould have been drawn in that direction.

Iwould, have assumed, on the basis of the second centuryb.c. Mathur? relief from Hariparvat T?la (Fig. 2) that the

sword-bearing male held a small figure in his right hand.

Accordingly Iwould have recalled that aSunga

relief

from Mathur? contains the upper portionof a male

having striking iconographie similarities with the BharnaKalan image (Fig. 15). Iwould have mentioned that V. S.

Agrawala identified that relief as a scene from the

SutasomaJ?taka.21

In thisJ?taka,

a Yaksa sacrifices aboy.

Probably Iwould have expressed the possibility that thesame Yaksa could be represented in one of the Bharna

Kalanfigures,

and that these date to the late first centuryb.c. If all thiswere then accepted by the scholarly

com

munity,a new bit of misinterpretation would have been

added to?one canonly hope?not

too much more.

65







Fig.iA Fig.

iB Fig.2

Fig. 3A Fig. 3B Fig. 4A Fig. 4B

Fig.i. a, Figure

from Bharma Kalan, Ksatrapa period,

sandstone, h. 6 feet 6 inches with base. Mathur? Museum

no. 87.145; b, Reverse. Figs. 1, 3, 4A, 15, Photographs

Government Museum, Mathur?.

Fig.2. Relief from Hariparvat T?l?, Mathur?. Figs. 2, 4B, 6,

7, 10, PhotographsAmerican Institute of Indian Studies,

Varanasi.Figs. 2, 4B, 6-8, 15, second century b.c., sandstone.

66

Fig. 3. a, Figure from Bharna Kalan, Ksatrapa period,

sandstone, h. 6 feet 5 inches with base. Mathur? Museum

no. 87.146; B, Reverse.

Fig. 4. a, Parkham Yaksa.h.

2.62m.

Mathur?Museum no.

ci; B, Reverse.







Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7

Fig. 8Fig. 9A Fig. 9B

Fig.io

Fig. 5. The Noh Yaksa.Photograph

Frederich M. Asher.

Fig.6. The Palwal Yaksa. h. 87.0, w. 79.0 cm. State Museum,

Lucknow no. 0.107.

Fig. 7. ThePratapgarh Yaksa. H. 1.150, w. 0.440 m.

Allahabad Museum no. 1.

Fig.8. Vidis? Yaksa.

PhotographFrederick M. Asher.

Fig. 9. Figureson Sane I: a, Eastern torana; b, Western

torana.Photographs, a, L. Buchhofer, Early Indian Sculpture,

pi. 58; B, R. N. Misra.

Fig.10. Bodh Gaya lotus medallion with turbaned head,

Bodh GayaMuseum no. 47.

67







Fig.iiAFig.

iiBFig.

12AFig.

2B

Fig. 13

Fig.ii.

Inscriptionson 87.145 (Fig. 1): a, Right side; b, Left

side.Photographs Archaeological Survey of India.

Fig.12.

Inscriptionson 87.146 (Fig. 3): a, Right side; b, Left

side.Photographs Archaeological Survey of India.

Fig. 13. Pitalkhora, vihara 4: doorkeepers, late second-early

first century b.c., Deccan trap.h. 5.5 inches.

Photograph

Archaeological Survey of India. From J. C. Harle, The Art and

Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent (Harmondsworth: Penguin,

1986), pi. 33.

68

Fig. H

Fig. 15

Fig. 14. Mathur? lintelfragment,

second century a.D.,

sandstone, h. 63.0, w. 121.0, l. 22.0 cm.Photograph, Joanna

G. Williams.

Fig. 15. Mathur? relief: figure holdinga sword and a small

male, Sunga,h. i foot 3 inches. Mathur? Museum no. 1.18







Notes

i. Iwish to thank the Director of the Mathur? Museum for

giving permissionto

publishthese statues. I also thank Shri M.

C.Joshi, Jt.

Director General of theArchaeological Survey of

India, for slides andphotographs.

The newphotographs

allowed

Lore Sander toimprove her first

reading,based on other

photo

graphs kindly supplied bythe Museum. The slides were most

useful in the oral presentation of this article at the fourth

symposium of The American Committee for South Asian Art,

Richmond, Virginia, April 29, 1988 byDoris M. Srinivasan.

We also thank Professor Dr. Herbert H?rtel, who reviewed

the inscriptions and madehelpful proposals.

2.Quite likely

the cloth is a fine cottonproduced

inMathur?

itself. The Artha's?stra(II.11.81)

refers to theproduction

of

cotton in Mathur?. The

Mah?bh?sya

also mentions a certain

cloth(pata)

called M?thura, that is, coming from Mathur?

(V.3.SS).3. Pramod Chandra, Yaksa and Yaks? Images from Vidis?,

Ars Orientalis 6(1966): 162; Susan

Huntington,Art

ofAncient India

(New York andTokyo, 1985), p. 59; James Harle, Art and

Architectureof

the Indian Subcontinent (Middlesex, 1986), p. 29.

4. See N. P.Joshi, Mathur? Sculptures (Mathur?, 1966),

pis. 18, 19.

5. Herbert H?rtel, Some Results of the Excavations at

Conkh: APreliminary Report, German Scholars on India II

(Bombay, 1976), fig. 41.

6.According

to D. C. Sircar, Epigraphical Glossary (Delhi,

Varanasi, and Patna, 1966), p. 259, pratih?rais "an officer in

chargeof the defence of the

royal palaceor bed-chamber or

the head of theguards

of the city gate."The title

pratih?ra

appears in the

inscription

no. 5 of the N?sik Caves

(EpigraphiaIndica VIII[reprint Calcutta, 1981], pp. 73-74),

which may be

dated onpalaeographical grounds

toapproximately

the same

periodas our

inscription, but itslanguage

ismoreprakritized.

In line 11, pratih?rakhiya Lot?ya is incised and translatedby

E. Senart as"by Lota, the

door-keeper."Krishna Deva, when

consulted byDoris Srinivasan on this inscription, also read

pratih?raon the right side of 87.146.

7. It is not clear how many Aksaras belongto line 1.Traces

of at least two Aksaras are detectable. Cf. also line 2 of 87.146;

seeAnalysis

in the text.

8.Only

the leftangle

of the Aksara bha is visible on the

eroded stone.

9. agnisais to be

expected, but the small stroke on the right

side of A makes thereading

?absolutely

sure.

10.Already

Krishna Deva read this line asagnisa (cf.

note

9) prati[ma]. He also deciphered the left-side inscription as

k?rit? priyat?m agi. Neither -?(k?)

nor -i(agi)

is to be seen. In

my reading priyamtam long-i is not

absolutely sure, but it is to

be expected. The Anusvara above ya isclearly

marked. My

reading agaya (=agnayah)is uncertain. It is based on the

observation that the stroke which is theonly

remains of the

originalAksara can

onlybe the middle part of the tripartite

ya. The gap between ga and the stroke is too broad to be read

as ra, which also would not make much sense. Krishna Deva

omitted these traces. Cf. the samepraise

in a much later

inscriptionof the year 24 of V?siska

(H. L?ders, Mathur?

Inscriptions. Abh. der Akademie der Wissenschaften in

G?ttingen, Philog.-Hist.Ki. 3. Folge,

Nr. 47, G?ttingen 1961,

? 94)after the announcement of the erection of a sacrificial

post (y?pa): priyant [a] m-agnaya(h).Cf. note 11.

11. k?rit? is to beexpected, but no trace of -? on k- is to be

seen. A similarwording

in an undated BuddhistKsatrapa

inscriptionon a

copingstone of a

railing announcing that a

railingwas caused to be made

bythe trooper (asvav?rika)

Bodhiya'sa. "May theholy

one bepleased" (vedik?

k?rit? pri

yat?[m] bhagav[?j);seeH. L?ders,Mathur? Inscriptions, 176.For

k?rit? cf. also G.

Bhattacharya, D?na-Deyadharma:

Donation

in Early Buddhist Records (inBr?hm?), Investigating ndianArt

(Berlin, 1987), Ver?ffentlichungendes Museums f?r Indische

Kunst, ed. byM. Yaldiz, W. Lobo, vol. 8, p. 49.

12. Please see note 1.

13. Verysimilar is the Kosam

inscription of Kaniska I, year2

(EpigraphiaIndica,vol. XXIX, pp.

210-212 =D. C. Sircar, Select

Inscriptions Bearingon Indian History and Civilization, vol. I 3rd ed.

[Delhi, 1986], pi.XXV. Sircar reads samvatsare 3 against

Goswami inEpigraphia Indica p.

211. Cf. also H. H?rtel, A

Remarkable InscribedSculpture,

D. Barrett Felicitation Volume,

note 10; inpress).

For furthercomparisons

see TheJal?mpur

Mound Inscription of Sod?sa(H. L?ders, Mathur? Inscriptions,

? 64); R. C. Sharma, BuddhistArt ofMathur? (Delhi, 1984),illustration no. 6, Sod?sa new

inscription;H. H?rtel, An

Early

Coping Stone Inscription from Mathur?, Deyadharma,Studies in

Memory of

D. C. Sircar, ed. G.

Bhattacharya (Delhi, 1987),

Sri

Garib Dass Oriental Series, no. 33, pp. 101-110, esp.note 21

about ma, which points i.a. to a somewhat earlier date of the

railingstone

inscriptionsof

S?ryamitra.Note that in the Kus?na

era da is curved the other way round.

14. L?ders, Mathur? Inscriptions, ?120.

15. Harle, Art andArchitecture, p. 51;Huntington,Art

ofAncient

India, p. 83; Vidya Dehejia, Early Buddhist Rock Temples (London,

1972), p. 157.

16. Here we have another indicator that Mathur? must be

recognizednot

onlyas a

prominent Jain and Buddhist center,

butprobably

as first and foremost a center of Brahmanic and

Hindureligious

activities. For other indicators seeMathur?: The

CulturalHeritage, gen. ed. Doris Meth Srinivasan

(New Delhi,

1989), Introduction, p. xiii.

17. Sircar, Select Inscriptions I, no. 26a; cf. also L?ders, Mathur?

Inscriptions, ? 115, from the time of Sod?sa.

18. R. C. Sharma, NewInscriptions

from Mathur?, Mathur?:

The CulturalHeritage, p. 312.

19. Ulrich Wiesner, Nepalese Temple Architecture(Leiden,

1978), pp. 56-57; fig. 17

20. Ibid., p. 57, fig.18.

21. V. S.Agrawala, Mathur? Museum

Catalogue,Part III

(Lucknow 1952), pp. 98-99.

69

This content downloaded on Thu 24 Jan 2013 19:37:45 PMAll bj t t JSTOR T d C diti




Documents

Srinivasan Newly Discovered Inscribed Mathurā Sculptures of Probable Doorkeepers