Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c9.6

c9.6

To what class Upāli belonged is not clear. But certain it is that he was neither a Brāhmaṇ nor a Kshatriya. We shall, therefore, now take an instance in which a Kshatriya is said to have studied *Rūpa*. Some of you will perhaps have guessed that I intend here referring to Khāravela, the ruler of Kaliṅga. In a cave called Hāthigumphā in the Udayagiri hill, three miles from Bhubaneswar, in the Puri District of Orissa, we have got a long inscription of this king, describing the different events of the different years of his reign. In line 2 of this epigraph we are told that for the first fifteen years of his age he was a *kumāra* and played children’s games. From his sixteenth to his twenty-fourth year he was a Yuvarāja or heir-apparent, and during this period he is represented to have mastered *Lekha*, *Rūpa*, *Gaṇanā* and *Vyavahāra*.¹ The first three of these terms are exactly identical with those employed in the story narrated of Upāli, and must therefore bear each the same signification. It is true that neither *Lekha*, nor *Rūpa*, nor *Gaṇanā* can be a source of living to a prince. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that they must form a most essential factor of his education. A prince must learn *Lekha*, *i.e.* not merely writing A, B, C, but rather the artful style of writing and the different forms of royal writ. Similarly, in order that he may effect minimum of expenditure and maximum of receipts, he must be an adept in the science of *Gaṇanā*. The science of *Rūpa* also he cannot afford to ignore, for on his knowledge of it depend the tiding over of a financial crisis and the various methods of augmenting his revenue.