The Greeks in Bactria and India c17: Appendix 5. Demetrius in the Hāthigumphā Inscription of Khāravela
The Greeks in Bactria and India c17
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Appendix 5. Demetrius in the Hāthigumphā Inscription of Khāravela
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Few inscriptions have evoked so much discussion as the long document in the Hāthigumphā cave (Cave of the Elephant) in Orissa which records the acts of Khāravela, king of the Kalingas.¹ It ought to be a valuable historical record, but it is said to be so defaced and so difficult to decipher that almost everything about it seems to be matter of controversy or conjecture, including its date; for though the dominant opinion has been, and is, that it belongs to the middle of the second century B.C. (the reasons for this belief have differed considerably at different times), this opinion has not passed undisputed; there are archaeological difficulties for one thing,² and if an eminent scholar could declare in 1930 that on epigraphical grounds it must be very much later than 150 B.C.,³ a layman cannot regard the date as settled. What interests the Greek historian, however, and the reason why this Appendix has to be written, is the fact that of recent years this inscription has been supposed to contain, and may contain, a reference to Demetrius.
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¹ Bibliography of the large literature in *CHI* p. 683, supplemented at considerable length by de la Vallée-Poussin pp. 193-4. Accounts of the inscription in *CHI* pp. 534 *sqq.* and de la Vallée-Poussin pp. 193 *sqq.* On the various datings proposed see also Sten Konow, *Acta Orientalia* 1, 1923, p. 12.
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² Sir John Marshall in *CHI* pp. 639 *sq.*
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³ De la Vallée-Poussin p. 198; Khāravela must be ‘après, beaucoup après 150’, probably early first century A.D.
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In 1919 the late Dr Jayaswal and the late Professor R. D. Banerji made a fresh examination of the rock, and Jayaswal announced that he had read the word Yavanaraja, followed by the proper name Dimata; he has stated that he found the syllable -ma- clear and ultimately with great difficulty read Dimat[a.⁴ This reading, and its interpretation as the Greek king Demetrius, were accepted both by Banerji⁵ and by Dr Sten Konow.⁶ Konow however said of his own reading: ‘I can see Yavanaraja, as read by Mr Jayaswal, and of his Dimata the -ma- is quite legible’; he did not say if he could see the supposed faint traces of the rest of the word. Finally, in a joint article in 1930,⁷ Jayaswal and Banerji, after saying that -ma- was distinct and that the first and third syllables could be read with great difficulty, added that the Greek king Demetrius called himself Dime[tra on his coin legends. The inscription is in Prakrit, and Dimata might therefore, I suppose, replace Dimetra; but though Dimetra might have passed in 1919, when nothing was known of the Kharoshthi version of Demetrius’ name on his rare bilingual coins but the letters Dime-, it should not have been put forward in 1930, seeing that in 1923 Mr Whitehead had published¹ the bilingual tetradrachm (p. 77), now in the British Museum, which gives (in the genitive) the full Kharoshthi reading of Demetrius’ name, Demetriyasa. There is however among the transcriptions of the Greek name Demetrios² a seal from Besnagar which reads ‘Of Timitra’, and which would I suppose suffice to make Dimata a quite possible Prakrit form.³ But on the facts above stated it would appear that there is an element of conjecture in the reading.
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⁴ *JBORS* XIII, 1927, pp. 221, 228.
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⁵ *Ib.*
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⁶ Konow *op. cit.* p. 27.
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⁷ *Ep. Ind.* XX, 1929-30, pp. 76, 84.
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¹ NC 1923 p. 317 no. 2.
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² Transcriptions. Dattāmitra (Patañjali and Mahābhārata), Devamantiya (Milindapañha), Dharma-mita (Yuga-purāṇa, App. 4); these three are ‘adjusted’ to look like Indian words. Demetriya (on the bilingual tetradrachm), Timitra (on a seal from Besnagar, ASI 1914-15 i p. 19, ii p. 77). Add Damtāmitiyaka or Datāmitiyaka (Nasik 19, see p. 257 n. 3) for an inhabitant of Demetrias, and Dharmamitra-Demetrias, Lévi in JA 1933 p. 27 n. 1 (see p. 118). Note that Demetriya, though Prakrit, has retained the r.
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³ The substitution in Prakrit of t for the Greek δ can be seen on the coins in the usual Kharoshthi form of Artemidorus, Atrimitora, and in the two variants of Diomedes, Diyamedesa and Diyametasa, Whitehead NC p. 333. On one tetradrachm of Artemidorus the Kharoshthi has dropped the r but kept the d, Atimidara; Martin, JASB XXIII, 1927, Num. Supp. XL p. 20.
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There is also, I apprehend, an element of conjecture in the decipherment of the sentence which states what the Yavanaraja did, as the translations of Jayaswal and Konow (I have not found any other) differ considerably. Konow’s version⁴ in 1923 was: ‘And through the uproar occasioned by the action [i.e. incidents of Khāravela’s invasion of Magadha] the Yavana king Demetrius went off to Mathurā in order to relieve his generals who were in trouble.’ Jayaswal’s version in 1927⁵ was: ‘On account of the report (uproar) occasioned by the acts of valour [i.e. the capture of a fortress etc. previously mentioned] the Greek king Demet(rios) drawing in his army and transport retreated to abandon Mathurā.’ Then in 1928 Jayaswal put forward a totally different view:⁶ what the inscription refers to, he said, is the Greek king (he does not say Demetrius) being beaten off from Pāṭaliputra when he attacked it and retreating to Mathurā. He had evidently discarded the abandonment of Mathurā (which is wise), and on this theory Khāravela does not come into the business at all.
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⁴ Op. cit. p. 27.
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⁵ JBORS XIII p. 228.
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⁶ JBORS XIV p. 417.
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It appears then (unless there be something later which I have missed) that all we can get at, taking the most favourable view, is that a Greek king, who may have been Demetrius, retreated to Mathurā. So much is known from other sources: the Yuga-purāṇa records the withdrawal of the Greeks from the Middle Country (App. 4), while Ptolemy and the coins show that Menander subsequently ruled in Mathurā (pp. 227, 228 n. 2, 245). Certainly the reason for this withdrawal given or implied in the inscription—that the Greeks were frightened away by the invasion of Khāravela, though *ex hypothesi* he was attacking their enemy Pushyamitra—cannot be right; it may have pleased Khāravela to think so (if the inscription really be his and not of a later time), but one must follow the Yuga-purāṇa, which is explicit that the Greeks left the Middle Country because of Eucratides’ invasion. It is true that this statement of the Yuga-purāṇa cannot be checked; but as the account given in the Yavana sections of that document is supported by the Greek Apollodorus where we possess him (Chap. iv), one feels confidence in its statement about the Greek withdrawal, though no fragment of Apollodorus on the subject has survived. But the inscription, though its somewhat conjectural decipherment affords no firm ground to the historian, may be right about the fact of the withdrawal, even though the reason be wrongly given.
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One further point must be briefly noticed. Konow has put forward the view that, if the Khāravela inscription really mentions Demetrius (note the ‘if’), then Demetrius was the king of the sieges of Sāketa and Madhyamikā mentioned by Patañjali,¹ which would mean (among other things) that it was he and not Menander who led the Greek advance south-eastward and he and not Apollodotus who led the Greek advance southward of Sind. Had the relations between Demetrius and his lieutenants ever been worked out, such a theory could never have been put forward; the evidence given in Chapter iv is too strong to give it a chance. But quite apart from that, the inscription can have no bearing at all on the Greek *invasion*, as I have been at pains to explain (pp. 146 *sq.*). What it might show is that Demetrius was in the Middle Country when the news came of Eucratides’ attack, and ordered the withdrawal from Pātaliputra; but at present it is not possible to rely on this as attested by evidence, though the course of events (see Chaps. iv and v) renders it probable enough in itself.
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¹ *Op. cit.* p. 35. Jayaswal has followed him, *JBORS* xiv p. 127.
Linked texts (1)
- Vṛddhagārgīyajyotiṣa — Garga, Sanskrit