History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c21.s1.12

c21.s1.12

Bhīṭā is 10 miles S.S.W. from Allahabad.² It is on the southern bank of the Jumna. The City stood at the gate of the Chedi country. We find it fortified before the Maurya time, according to the excavations. The name of the place was Sahajāti, which is found in a terracotta seal matrix in the house called by Sir John Marshall the ‘House of Guild’. It is seal No. 1 which is the oldest record found at Bhīṭā. It is in Māgadhī and reads Sahajātiye nigamasa. Every letter of the seal is at least a century older (if not earlier still) than Aśoka’s letters. Sir John’s reading (Sahijitiye) is incorrect. The town of Sahajāti is mentioned in the Vinaya Piṭaka (Chullavagga, Chap. XII) where at the time of the Second Council (about 100 years after the Buddha’s death) the Venerable Revata is approached by the brethren of Vaiśālī who reach it by a boat.³ Sahajāti was in the Chedi country and it was so in the time of the Buddha’s disciple Chuṇḍa.⁴ Numerous seals, found in the house of the President of the City Corporation, from Government Civil Officials and Military Officers and a Vākāṭaka prince [see below] prove that it was probably a military station in the Bhāraśiva and the Vākāṭaka period, as it evidently had been before. The seals would have been attached to government orders and also probably to orders for drawing money from the President who acted also as the State bank. The seals cover several generations. The city had grown as a commercial station, being situated almost at the terminus of the Jumna,