25. Inscription in cave IV at Ajaíòà.

D. C. SlRCAR, EI, XXXIII No. 49. An inscription was recently discovered on the pedestal of the huge Buddha image in the shrine inside Cave IV at Ajaíòà in the Aurangabad District of Bombay State, Before the discovery of this record, it was generally believed that the cave bears no epigraphic records and therefore its age was a subject of speculation.
The inscription is a votive record written in two lines only. The writing covers an area about 5 feet 6 inches long and about 4 1/2 inches high. Individual letters are about 1 inch in height although conjuncts and consonants with vowel-marks are bigger in size. The preservation of the writing is not satisfactory. Some of the letters are damaged here and there, while six letters are totally lost about the middle of line 2.
The characters of the inscription closely resemble those of the epigraph\1 of the time of the Vàkàòaka king Hariøåía in Cave XVI at Ajaíòà and of the Ghaòîtkacha cave inscription\2 at the village of Jaêglà about fifteen miles from Fardapur near Ajaíòà, which mentions king Dåvasåna of the Vàkaòaka dynasty.
Since the Vàkàòaka kings Dåvasåna and Hariøåía flourished about the second half of the fifth century A.D., our inscription, which is slightly later than their records, may be assigned to the first half of the sixth century. It may be pointed out, in connection with the date of the record, that the earlier writers on the history of the Vàkàòakas entertained a wrong view in regard to the chronology of that dynasty. Some of these writers assigned the reigns of king Dåvasåna and his son and successor Hariøåía to c. 475-500 A. D. and c. 500-20 A. D. respectively.\3 But they mixed up the Nàndèvardhana-Pravarapura and Vatsagulma branches of the family and wrongly made Dåvasåna and Hariøåía of the Vatsagulma branch the successors of their contemporaries of the Nàndèvardhana-Pravarapura branch.
Another group of scholars assigned Pravarasåna II of the Nàndèvardhana-Pravarapura branch, who was supposed to have been a predecessor of Dåvasåna and Hariøåía, to the eighth century A. D. on the basis of the identification of his maternal grandfather Dåvagupta with Àdityasåna's son of that name ruling over Magadha about 680-700 A. D.\4 It is, however, now known that the two branches of the royal family sprang from Vindyaùakti's son Pravarasåna I, the end of whose reign is referred to in the historical section of the Puràías, which was compiled when the Gupta empire was confined to Bihar and Eastern U. P., i.e. about the second quarter on the fourth century A. D. We now also know that the maternal grandfather of Pravarasåna II of Nàndèvardhana-Pravarapura was not Dåvagupta of the so-called Later Gupta dynasty but the Imperial Gupta monarch Chandragupta II who ruled in the period 376-413 A. D. In the Vatsagulma branch, Pravarasåna I was followed by: (1) his son Sarvasåna; (2-3) his sons Vindhyaùakti II and Pðthivèøåía; (4) Pravarasåna II, son of Pðthiviøåía; (5) his son whose name is lost; (6) his son Dåvasåna; and (7) Dåvasåna's son Hariøåía. In the other house, Pravarasåna I was followed on the throne by: (1) his grandson Rudrasåna I, son of Gautamèputra; (2) his son Pðthvèøåía I; (3) his son Rudrasåna II; (4-6) his queen Prabhàvatèguptà, daughter of Chandragupta II, and sons Dàmîdarasåna and Pravarasåna II; (7) Pravarsåna's son Naråndrasåna; and (8) his son Pðthvèøåía II.
Since Sarvasåna began to rule about the second quarter of the fourth century, it is difficult to believe that the reign of his grandson's great-grandson Harishåía extended beyond 500 A.D. Hariøåía's father Dåvasåna again was the sixth in descent from Pravarasåna I exactly as Pravarasåna II of the other branch, who was the daughter's son of Chandragupta II (376-413 A. D.) and could not have ended his reign much later than the middle of the fifth century A. D. Since, however, Gautamèputra of the other branch apparently predeceased his father and did not rule, Naråndrasåna, son and successor of Pravarasåna II of that branch, may be regarded as a contemporary of Devasåna of Vatsagulma. Even then the rule of Dåvasåna and Hariøåía should have to be attributed to a period before the close of the fifth century.\5
The inscription is written in Sanskrit. The first sentence states that the object on which the inscription is incised (i.e. the Buddha image) was the dåya-dharma or gift of a person named Màthura who was "the son of Abhayanandin and Skandavasu and belonged to the Kàrvaòiyà gîtra. Apparently Abhayanandin was the name of Màthura's father and Skandavasu that of his mother, although female names like Skandavasu are not often met with.\6 The Kàrvaòiyà gîtra is not known from ancient Indian literature. Màthura is further described as the Vihàrasvàmin or 'the owner of the monastery'. The monastery referred to is undoubtedly Cave IV at Ajanòà, in which the image of the Buddha bearing the inscription under study is' enshrined.
The importance of the inscription lies in the welcome light it throws on the controversy about the age of Cave IV at Ajaíòà. The difference of opinion amongst scholars is due to the fact that, in the absence of any inscription in the said Cave, they had so long to depend entirely on the less specific evidence such as that of architectural and sculptural style. Besides the absence of inscriptions in many of the caves, another fact contributing to the confusion regarding the dates of the Ajaíòà caves is the wrong date assigned by earlier writers to kings Dåvasåna and Hariøåía of the Vàkàòaka family, during whose rule respectively the Ghaòîtkacha Cave and Cave XVI at Ajaíòà were excavated. This point has already been discussed above.
A number of writers on the subject are inclined to assign Cave IV at Ajaíòà to a date between the sixth and eighth centuries A. D.\7 They divide twentynine caves at Ajaíòà into two broad groups, the first of which is called Early or Hènayàna and Caves VIII-XIII are included in it by some scholars. This group of caves is assigned to the period between the second century B.C. and the second or third century A. D. The second group, called Later or Mahàyàna and supposed to be removed from the other by a considerable period of time, is subdivided into two sub-groups. To the first of these two are assigned Caves XIV-XX believed to have been excavated in the sixth century due to Cave XVI bearing an inscription mentioning Vàkàòaka Hariøåía whose reign was assigned to the age in question, while Caves VI-VII of the same class are attributed to a date between 450 and 550 A. D. Caves I-V and XXI-XXIX, constituting the second sub-group of the Later or Mahàyàna group and assigned to the period between 500 and 650 A. D. or between the sixth or seventh and the seventh or eighth centuries A.D., are called 'the latest Caves at Ajaíòà' and 'the most ornate group of the whole series'. According to these scholars, therefore, Cave IV, the largest Vihàra at Ajaíòà, belongs to the latest group of Ajaíòà Caves which may be as late as the seventh or eighth century A. D. There is, however, another view, according to which Cave IV is the earliest Mahàyàna Vihàra at Ajaíòà and 'was probably excavated in the third century A.D. or still earlier' though 'the decorative work may have been done at a later date'.\8 But the inscription under study now shows that the cave was excavated about the first half of the sixth century A. D.
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1. ASWI, Vol. 1, pp. 53, 128 ff. and Plate LVI; above, Vol. XXVI, pp. 142 ff, and Plate facing p. 143; etc. (DS)
2. ASWI, op. cit. pp. 138 ff. and Plate IX. (DS)
3. ASWI, op. cit, p. 128. (DS)
4. See CII, Vol. III, Introduction, p. 15. (DS)
5. For the dates of these Vàkàtaka kings, see The Classical Age, pp. 177 ff. (DS)
6. It does not appear to be a single name reading Abhayanandiskandavasu. It ia also doubtful whether we can suggest Abhayanandin alias Skandavasu.
Note to fn.3 from additions: For the female name Nàgavasu with the honorific ùrè sufixed to it, see above, Vol. XXI, p. 64. (DS)
7. J. Fergusson and J. Burgess, The Cave Temples of India, 1880, pp. 80 ff.; J. Burgess ASWI, Vol. IV (Report on the Buddhist Cave Temples and their Inscriptions, 1876-79), pp. 43 ff.; J. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, 2nd ed., pp. 188 ff.; A. Coomaraswamy, Hislory of Indian and Indonesian Art, pp. 28, 76, 96 etc. There is diiference among scholars as regards the date of individual caves. (DS)
8. G. Yazdani, Ajanta, Part III, Text, 1946, p. 7. (DS)