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VIII. The Inscription on the Piprawa Vase
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
Some remarks made in the Journal des Savants, 1905. 540 ff., by our valued friend and collaborator M. Sylvain Lévi, have given me a clue which enables me to now carry to a final result that which I have to say about the inscription on the steatite or soap-stone Piprāwā relic-vase,—the oldest known Indian record. He has drawn attention to a statement by Hiuen Tsiang (see page 166 below), overlooked by me, which has led me to weigh the wording of the inscription in such a manner that no doubt whatsoever remains as to the real meaning of it, and as to the circumstances connected with it.
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page 149 note 1 The lingual ṇ may or may not be correct; and it may or may not have been intended. But it is certainly presented by the original.
I have no object in differing from Dr. Bloch, who considered (see this Journal, 1899. 426) that the appearance of ṇ, is due to a small piece of the stone having peeled off when the engraver was forming the vowel i as attached to a dental n. And I accepted his view of the matter in the reading which I gave on the previous occasion (this Journal, 1905. 680).
The cast, however, points plainly to a different conclusion. It shews distinctly a completely incised top stroke, which makes the difference hetween n and ṇ. At the same time, it does shew that a small piece of stone peeled off along the top of that stroke. So we may perhaps hold that the engraver's hand slipped, and his tool went further than was intended, and he formed ṇi instead of ni by accident.
page 150 note 1 That is, their orphan unmarried sisters. As the base of sa-bhagiṇikanaṁ, we might take sa-bhaginī, with the suffix ka. I prefer, however, to take sabhaginika, from sa + bhaginikā. The St. Petersburg Dictionary gives bhaginikā, as a diminutive of bhaginī. And that word, with that meaning, is a very suitable one, in this record at any rate. The grown-up sisters were, of course, all married; and they are covered by the word “wives” in the next adjective. The unmarried sisters who were not orphans are covered by the word “children.”
page 150 note 2 It may be noted that, whereas the word salilaṁ, = śarīraṁ, in the singular, means ‘a body,’ the plural salilāni, śarīrāṇi, means ‘bones,’ and so, secondarily, ‘relics.’ The base in composition here represents, of course, the plural.
The difference is well marked in the Mahāparinibbānasutta. It was sarīraṁ, the body, the corpse, of Buddha, that was cremated so that the skin, the hide, the flesh, the tendons, and the lubricating fluid of the joints were all consumed, leaving neither ashes nor soot (text, ed. Childers, JRAS, 1876. 258). It was sarīrāni, his bones, which alone remained unconsumed (ibid.). And it was sarīrāni, his bones, his relics, which were claimed by various claimants, and were apportioned amongst them, and over which Stūpas were built (258–260).
page 153 note 1 I find that, in the references to previous treatments of this record which I gave in the same place, I omitted to mention the edition of it, with a lithograph, given by M. Barth in the Comptes-Rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1898. 147, 231, which was published at just about the same time with Dr. Bühler's version. The two versions agree in all substantial points.
page 153 note 2 Childers, in his Pali Dictionary, has given bhāti as an optional base, as a first member of compounds. He has also given bhatitō — (? a misprint for bhātitō) — as a second form of the ablative singular.
It seems plain that there were two optional bases, bhātu and bhāti, for some declensional purposes, at any rate in the epigraphic dialect, and that the same was the case with the Pāali forms of pitṛi and mātṛi.
page 153 note 3 The published texts of the edicts, indeed, present in both cases bhātinaṁ, with the short i. But the long ī, which gives the correct form, is quite distinct in the lithograph of the Kālsī version, and is, in my opinion, clearly recognisable in also the lithograph of the Dhauli version.
page 154 note 1 Su is here taken as the interrogative particle, which often accompanies kathaṁ, on the analogy of the preceding two lines, kathaṁ su labhatē paññnaṁ kathaṁ su vindatē dhanaṁ.
But, having regard to the next line, kathaṁ mittāni ganthati, and to the last, kathaṁ pechcha na sōchati, we might just as readily read kathaṁ sukittiṁ pappōti, and find here the word sukitti itself.
page 155 note 1 I have to observe that, both in his transcription on page 347, and in his representation of the original in plate 29, fig. 9, Sir A. Cunningham has given Gōtiputa, as if a compound had been intended; Gōtiputa-aṁtēvāsinō, for Gōtiput-aṁtēvāsinō. Fortunately, he has also shewn part of the record, in fig. 8, as it actually lies on the rim of the vase. And there we have distinctly the genitive Gōtiputasa.
The Anusvāra of aṁtēvāsinō may or may not stand in the original; compare a remark in this Journal, 1905. 688. I supply it because, in merely using the record for comparative purposes, it is more natural to write it.
page 158 note 1 We might perhaps expect the Pāli form of svakīya to be sakīya, with the long ī. Childers, however, has in his dictionary remarked that the short i is correct, as also in parakiya, ‘belonging to another,’ dutiya, ‘second,’ gahita, = gṛihīta, ‘taken,’ and other words.
page 159 note 1 The original text (pages 258, 260) has Sakyā; not Sākiyā, as we are led to suppose by Professor Rhys Davids' translation (SBE, 11. 131 f.).
page 160 note 1 Somehow or other, the learned translator omitted to reproduce this second passage in his translation (page 134).
It must also be observed that he has considerably misunderstood the nature of the relic that was assigned to the Brāhmaṇ Dōṇa, who collected and apportioned the remains of Buddha.
The corpse of Buddha was cremated in ayasā tēla-dōṇi, ‘an iron trough for holding oil,’ which was covered by aññā ayasā dōṇi, ‘another iron trough’ (text, 256).
The translation says (135):—“And Doṇa the Brāhman made a mound over “the vessel in which the body had been burnt, and held a feast.”
The original text, however, does not say anything of the kind. It says (260):—Dōṇō pi brāhmaṇō kumbhassa thūpañ=cha mahañ=cha akāsi; “and the Brāhmaṇ Dōṇa made a Stūpa and a feast for the kumbha.”
A kumbha is not a dōṇi; much less is it an iron dōṇi. A kumbha is ‘an earthenware pot.’ The St. Petersburg Dictionary gives, as one of its special meanings, ‘a pitcher or urn in which the bones of a dead person are collected.’ It refers to, amongst other passages, the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa, 13. 8, 3, 4 ; for which see Dr. Eggeling's translation, SBE, 44. 434, and compare 433, note 2, and 117, note 3, and Muir's Sanskrit Texts, 5. 316. From all of this, we learn that the loss of any of a dead man's bones was regarded by his friends as disgraceful, and that there was a regular custom, after the cremation of a corpse, of collecting the bones with a view to placing them in an earthen vessel and burying them. And I may add that an allusion to the collection of the bones in a kumbha or in several kumbhas, after cremation, of king Prabhākaravardhana, is found in the Harshacharita, Kashmīr text 370, line 1, trans. 159, and note 6.
It was, thus, not over the iron trough in which Buddha had been cremated, but over the earthen vessel in which his bones were collected and from which they were distributed to the various people who received them, that the Brāhmaṇ Dōṇa built his Stūpa.
A note may be added, on the story given in the Mahāparinibbānasutta, in respect of the statement that, before the cremation, which took place at Kusinārā, the city of a branch of the Malla tribe, the corpse of Buddha was carried in procession (text, 255) to:— Makuṭabandhanaṁ nāma Mallānaṁ chētiyaṁ ; “the shrine of the Mallas which was named Makuṭabandhana.”
The Makuṭabandhanachētiya of the Mallas was their “coronation-temple,” in which would be performed the ceremony of the binding on of the tiara of chieftainship. We know that from what we have learnt about Paṭṭadkal, the ancient Paṭṭada-Kisuvoḷal, the “Kisuvoḷal of the fillet of sovereignty,” which was the coronation-town of the Chalukya kings, and about the Jain temple at Saundatti, named Raṭṭara Paṭṭa-Jinālaya, which was the coronation-temple of the Raṭṭas; see IA, 30, 1901. 263, and note 34.
This shrine of the Mallas is mentioned again, and in very unmistakable terms, in the Divyāvadāna (ed. Cowell and Neil, 201):— Ramaṇïy=Ānanda Vaiśalī Vṛijibhūmiś… … dhurā-nikshēpaṇaṁ Mallānāṁ Makuṭabandhanaṁ chaityam ; “charming, O Ānanda !, is Vaīśālī, and the land of Vṛiji … …, and the Makuṭabandhanachaitya of the Mallas, where the yoke (of chieftainship) is fastened on to them.”
page 162 note 1 The Kōḷiyas, however, the cousins of the Sākiyas, took a different view of the matter when it suited them. In a quarrel which they had with the Sākiyas about the use of the river Rōhiṇī for irrigational purposes, they reviled the Sākiyas as being descended from people who “cohabited with their own sisters, just like dogs, jackals, and other animals” (see the commentary on the Dhammapada, p. 351).
page 162 note 2 For this matter, see the Dīghanikāya, 3. 1, 16 (ed. Davids and Carpenter, 92), and, more fully, Buddhaghōsha's comments on that passage in his Sumaṅgalavilāsinī (ed. D. and C., part 1. 258 ff.).
page 162 note 3 I mark this form Śākīya with an asterisk, because, though it is given in the St. Petersburg Dictionary, I cannot at present cite any passage in which it actually occurs.
It seems that the word Śākya does not actually occur either in Pāṇini, or in the Mahābhāshya, or in the Kāśikā. But, by means of Pāṇini's rules and the gaṇas established in connection with them, it might be derived in the following ways:—
(1) Under Pāṇini, 4. 1, 105, from Śaka ; with the meaning ‘offspring of the Śaka clan.’ But, whereas, the gaṇa Gargādi under this sūtra includes the word Śaka as it is given in Böhtlingk's Pāṇini, 2. 92, the gaṇa as given in the Benares edition of the Kāśikā does not include it.
(2) Under Pāṇini, 4. 1, 151, from Śāka ; with the meaning of ‘offspring of a man named Śāka.’
(3) Under Pāṇini, 4. 3, 92, from Śaka; with the meaning ‘the Śaka territory was his original place of abode, his ancestral home.’
But these would be academical explanations, to which we need not attach importance in the face of what I shew above.
page 165 note 1 The translator, Professor Rhys Davids, has once correctly reproduced the form Sakya (SBE, 36. 85). He has twice substituted Sakya for Sakka (ibid. 143, 249). In the remaining five instances, he has substituted the imaginative form Sākya for Sakya (SBE, 35. 163, 173, 290, 301) and for Sakka (ibid. 153).
page 165 note 2 So, also, as regards the essential purport, runs the version published independently at the same time elsewhere (see note 1 on page 153 above). But the author of it did not concur in connecting the record with the enshrining of the relics of Buddha immediately after the cremation.
page 166 note 1 Compare, Beal, Si-yu-ki, 2. 20.
page 166 note 2 The Pāli books give the name as Viḍūḍabha (see page 169 ff. below; also the Jātaka, ed. Fausböll, 1. 133).
The name figures as Virūḍhaka in Sanskṛit in the version of the story which is given in the Avadānakalpalatā, pallava 11 (ed. Vidyabhushana). This form of the name would appear to be due to some confusion with the name of a supernatural being, Virūḍhaka, the regent of the south, and the chief of the Kumbhāṇḍas, who is mentioned in, for instance, the Lalitavistara, chap. 15 (ed. Mitra, 266; Lefmann, 217).
page 166 note 3 Regarding Vaidūrya as another variant of the name of Viḍūḍabha, see Watters in this Journal, 1898. 556. He has there said that the form Viṭaṭūbha occurs in Pāli, as well as Viḍūḍabha; and also a form Viḍuḍha, which, he considered, “ perhaps gave the Chinese Liu-li as if for Vaidūrya.”
page 168 note 1 I am giving only an abstract, not a translation. But I follow the different forms of the tribal name presented in the originals, uniformly in both as far as the two versions agree. This sentence, however, stands only in the Jātaka; it in not in Buddhaghōsha's commentary. Compare some remarks on page 164 above.
page 168 note 2 Buddhaghōsha says here “ to the Sākiyas,” without mentioning the city in this place.
page 168 note 3 The Jātaka calls him, mostly, simply “ Mahānāma.” Buddhaghōsha styles him “Mahānāma, the Sakka,” almost throughout.
page 169 note 1 So in the Jātaka; Buddhaghōsha here has Kapilapura. Further on, where the city is mentioned again (page 171 below), both versions have Kapilavatthu.
page 170 note 1 While awaiting the first proofs of my article, I have happened to read the Tauchnitz translation of Ebers' Egyptian Princess, which, though it is a romance, is based on history and on real manners and customs. I find there the following statements placed in the mouth of Rhodopis (1. 163), in respect of her grand-daughter Sappho being sought in marriage by Bartja, brother of the Persian king Cambyses:—
“ Her father was free and of noble birth, and I have heard that, by Persian “ law, the descent of a child is determined by the rank of the father only. In “ Egypt too the descendants of a female slave enjoy the same rights as those of “ a princess, if they owe their existence to the same father ” (211).
And, in the course of his reply, Crœsus is made to say (1. 164):—“The “ history of Iran too offers a sufficient number of examples in which even slaves “ became the mothers of kings ” (212).
The notes refer us :— 211, to Diod. 1. 81; and 212, to Firdusi, Book of the Kings, Sons of Feridun.
page 173 note 1 The biting of grass was a Hindū token of submission to an enemy, with a request for quarter. And it is to be inferred that holding a reed in the hand had the same meaning.
To this meaning of the biting of grass, there are frequent allusions. For instance, a passage in an inscription of the twelfth century says (IA, 19. 218):—“Tears, forsooth, are in the eyes of thy enemy's consort; blades of grass are perceived between thy adversary's teeth; ……; desolate are the minds of thy foes, when the jubilee of thy onward march has come, O illustrious lord Vigraharāja! ” And in the Prabandhachintāmaṇi we hare (trans. Tawney, 55):—“ Since even enemies are let off, when near death, if they take grass in their mouths, how can you slay these harmless beasts who always feed on grass ? ” And again (ibid. 189):—“ Grass is now worshipped in Paramardin's city, because, when taken in the mouth, it preserved our lord Paramardin from Pṛithvīrāja, the king of men.”
On the other hand, the throwing of grass and water was a challenge (see ibid. 97, 172). We may perhaps infer, from Buddhaghōsha's text, that biting potherbs, or holding them in the hands, was also a challenge.
page 173 note 2 The text has lōhita-nadiṁ pavattētvā. As, in Sanskṛit at any rate, we have the two forms lōhita and rōhita in similar meanings, we may perhaps find here the origin of the name of the river, the Rōhinī, which flowed hetween the territories of the Sākiyas and their cousins the Kōḷiyas; see, e.g., the Jātaka, 5. 412, and the commentary on the Dhammapada, 351. To the Chinese, the name was evidently given either as Rōhitanadī or as Lōhitanadī; see Wafers in this Journal, 1898. 547.
page 175 note 1 It need hardly be observed that there were, of course, others of the tribe, besides the inhabitants of Kapilavatthu. For instance, the Saṁyuttanikāya (ed. Feer, part 1) mentions a town of the Sakyas named Khōmadussa, in the Sakka country (7. 2, 12), and also a place named Silāvatī in the Sakka country (4. 3, 1, 2). The Milindapañha mentions Sakyas of Chātumā (ed. Trenckner, 209). Buddhaghōsha (op. cit. 222) and the Jātaka (4. 151) mention a town of the Sakyas named Uḷumpa. And a Chinese work appears to locate at only three yōjanas from Śrāvastī a village of the tribe which it calls Lu-t‘ang, “the deerhall” (Watters, On Yuan Chwang, 1. 401).
There is no indication of Viḍūḍabha having slaughtered any of the Sakyas beyond those of Kapilavatthu. And some of the Sakyas of such other towns may have helped to repopulate Kapilavatthu.
page 177 note 1 See, for instance, Buddhaghōsha's Sumaṅgalavilāsinī, ed. Davids and Carpenter, p. 262.
page 178 note 1 Of this, there is on record a case in point which may appositely he cited. It has been said, and not unjustifiably (this Journal, 1903. 293), that the characters on a certain coin may be, perhaps, of the ninth or tenth century; leaving us to infer that the coin itself might be allotted to that time. But, from the words of the legend, “the glorious Rāyamurāri,” we know that the coin is one of the Kaḷachurya king Rāyamurāri-Sōvidēva-Sōmēśvara of Kalyāṇi, who reigned a.d. 1167–1177.
page 178 note 2 Except in one word, in the last line, the same absence of the long ā appears to run through the record, in Brāhmī characters, on the Sōhgaurā plate (Proc. JASB, 1894. 84, plate; IA, 25. 261), which would thus seem to come rather near to the Piprāwā inscription in point of age.
On the other hand, the long ā is shewn in the legend, in Brāhmī characters, on the Ēraṇ coin of Dhamapāla (C.CAI, plate 11, No. 18 ; Rapson, Indian Coins, plate 4, No. 7), which is allotted (see Bühler's Indische Palaeographie, § 3) “if not to b.c. 400, at least to the middle of the fourth century; ” that is, to about a century before the time of Aśōka. So far, however, as this attribution is based on the view that the legend on the coin was written in reversed style, from right to left, see remarks in my introductory note to the English version of Dr. Bühler's work (Indian Antiquary, vol. 33, 1904, appendix).
page 179 note 1 See Dr. Bloch's Annual Report of the Archæological Survey, Bengal Circle, 1904–1905. 11.
A Buddhist cemetery (susāna) is mentioned in one of the Bharaut inscriptions (IA, 21. 228, No. 9):—“The woman Asaḍā, who has observed the jackals in the cemetery.” The representation of the scene, however (Stupa of Bharhut, plate 47, bottom, right) does not shew aṅy mounds.