Ancient History of the Deccan c3.s4.10

c3.s4.10

Many of these inscriptions are dated; we have at Nâsik (No. 1133 of Lüders's list) the years 41, 42 and 45. At Junnar an inscription (No. 1174 of Lüders's list) that records a grant of Ayama (Aryaman), minister of Nahapâna, give us the date 46. A reign of 46 years is rare; we may therefore suppose that these 46 years are not counted from the year of the coronation of Nahapâna but from the beginning of a particular era. This supposition seems to be confirmed by some other documents. We know that the satraps of Mathurâ belonged to the dynasty of Kshaharâtas and that one of them Râjûvula (Ranjubula) struck coins similar to those of Nahapâna, and we may suppose that they were contemporaries. The son of this Râjûvula named Śoḍâsa has left an inscription in Mathurâ (No. 59 of Lüders's list) dated in the year 72 [Âmohini record]. Here there can be no doubt. Here it is question of the year 72 of a particular era, for, it is improbable that Śoḍâsa reigned 72 years. Moreover, Mr. Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar has affirmea (page 275, Vol. XX of Vol. XX of the Journal of the Bombay branch of the Royal Asiatic Society) "I maintain that on similar palæographic grounds Nahapâna must be supposed to be prior to Śoḍâsa" and we find a complete justification of this opinion in his paper ('A Kushan stone inscription'). Thus Palæography proves that the inscriptions of Nahapâna which are dated 41, 42, 45, 46, are more archaic than the inscription of Soḍāsa which is dated in the year 72. As these two princes belong to the same family of Kshaharâtas (J. R. A. S. for 1912 p. 122) and the coinage of Nahapâna resembles that of Râjûvula, father of Soḍāsa, it is natural to suppose that Nahapâna and Soḍāsa dated their inscriptions from the same era. What can this era be? It is generally admitted now that the inscription of Soḍāsa is dated from the Vikrama era which begins in 58 B. C. If, then, the Vikrama era was no other than the Kshaharâta era, the inscriptions of Nahapâna at Nâsik and Junar will be dated in the years 17, 16, 13 and 12 B. C. These dates perfectly agree with the facts furnished by archæology. We have said that the art of the monuments of Nahapâna at Kârli and Nâsik resemble that of the grand Stûpa at Sâñchi. It must be noted now that the art of the monuments of Nahapâna differs much from the art of the epoch of Kaṇishka. The discovery of the casket in which Kaṇishka locked up the relics of Buddha has proved, that in the time of Kaṇishka, Buddha was represented with the head adorned with an aureole and the body dressed in a robe with long folds. It is thus that Buddha is very often represented at Amarâvatî. We see nothing like it in the monuments of Nahapâna. It will be too long to give here a detailed history of the evolution of the Hindu art; we shall content ourselves with saying that we can approximately determine the age of the sculptures from the ornamentation and the style. We think it is useless to take up this question again, since we have already developed this theory at great length in Vol. I of our work, "Archæologie du Sud de l'Inde", Vol. I, Architecture. In the course of a series of tours that I made in the Deccan in 1910 - 11, I collected photographs of the principal monuments in this region and particularly those of Kârli and Nâsik. Illustrations intended to support the theory developed in chapters I & II, (pages 15 to 49) of the book will be found in plates I to IX. That theory is the following: there is a difference between the monuments that are anterior to the Christian era and those that are posterior to it. The monuments of Nahapâna at Nâsik and Kârli are of the same family as the stûpa at Sâñchi and are anterior to Jesus-Christ. On the contrary, the sculptures of the epoch of Kanishka, those of the tope at Amarâvati, the caves of Gautamiputra at Nâsik and of Yajña Śri at Kaṇhêri are posterior to Jesus-Christ and are characterised by a very particular kind of ornamentation.