History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c16.s3.83

c16.s3.83

Hultzsch has suggested that the inscriptions were defaced at the time of the installation of the Hindu images by Anantavarman.¹ There is little to be said in favour of this view, which rests on a very slender basis, and is disproved by the fact that the only cave inscription in which the word *Ājīvikehi* remains quite intact, that of the Gopikā cave on Nāgārjunī Hill, is one of the three in which Anantavarman placed a Hindu ikon.² If the defacement had been the work of the carvers of the Maukhari inscriptions they would surely have taken special care to obliterate all record of the Ājīvikas in those caves which their master had dedicated to Hindu deities.