TWO EARLY BRAHMI RECORDS FROM AJANTA

A. GHOSH - EI, 37, No.43.
In August 1966, Professor Walter M. Spink of the University of Michigan, who has been intensively studying the renowned rock-cut caves at Ajaíòà, District Aurangabad, Maharashtra State, told me in conversation that he had noticed two partially exposed but unpublished records, one engraved and the other painted, in Cave 10 of Ajaíòà. Coming to know this, Shri M. C. Joshi, Assistant Superintendent, Archaeological Survey of India, located and preliminarily studied whatever could be seen of the records at the time of his visit to Ajaíòà in December 1966. On return he informed me that one of the records (called here Record A) occurred on the wall of the cave and the other (Record B) on one of the (rock-cut) rafters of the cave-roof, both on the dexter side.
When Shri B. B. Lal, Joint Director General of Archaeology, and I visited Ajaíòà in January 1967, we found that only two letters at the beginning and four letters towards the end of record. A were partly visible, the rest being entirely hidden under a layer of plaster, which had been laid to serve as the ground for the paintings that the cave bears. Similarly hidden under a plaster-film was the middle part of the first line of record B, though its second line was more distinct. We also noticed that, luckily from the point of view of the study of the records, the paintings over the plaster had in, both the cases disappeared, so that nothing would be lost if the remnants of the plaster which obscured the records were removed. Accordingly, the plaster-layers were very carefully scraped off in our presence and the records were brought to the condition in which we see them now.
Cave 10, a chaitya-griha, was excavated in the earlier (Sàtavàhana\1) phase of Ajaíòà, in the second century B.C., and bears paintings regarded as almost contemporary with its excavation in addition to those of the later (Vàkàòaka) phase of the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. Prior to the discovery of the present two records, it was known to have an inscription and twentyone painted records, the former and one of the latter belonging to the earlier phase. The inscription, engraved above the sinister side of the entrance to the cave, commemorates the gift of the facade or entrance (ghara-mukha) by one Vàsiòhèputa Kaòahàdi.\2 The second record, itself painted, is a part of the painted scene of the worship of a stópa by the lord of the nàgas\3 which is painted on the dexter wall of the cave, farther in the interior than Record A; it is noteworthy that the plaster which hid parts of Record A was an extension of the same plaster as the one on which the scene appears. The record is of uncertain import; from the word bhagavatasa occurring in it, 'one thing, however, is clear and this is that this was not a votive record but served as an explanatory note of the scene represented in the painting which may have been from the life of the Buddha.\4 It has been regarded as 'almost contemporary' or 'slightly later than\5 Kaòahàdi's inscription. As we shall see below, its posteriority to the latter is well-established even on grounds other than palaeographical.
To come to our Records A and B, Record A, as stated above, is engraved and is, therefore, an inscription in the real sense of the word. It appears on the vertical part of the wall of the cave, between the second and fourth ribs of the roof, immediately below the spring-point of the vault, at a height of 2.57 m above the floor-level. It is a single-line inscription, 76 cm long, the height of the letters, which are large and boldlike those in the inscription of Kaòahàdi, ranging from 5 to 8 cm. It records the gift of the wall (bhiti=Sanskrit bhitti) by one Kanhaka, who is qualified by the adjective Bàhaäa, evidently meaning '(a resident) of Bàhaäa'. As Kanha must have been a very common personal name, it would be too imaginative to identify this Kanhaka with the early Sàtavàhana ruler Kanha\6 or with Kaíha, son of Sama or Samasa\7 and a resident of Dhånukàkaòa, or with Kanhadàsa who fashioned sculptures at Pitalkhora.\8
Bàhada also appears as a place-name in a Bharhut inscription.\9 My colleague Shri M. N. Deshpande suggests to me that it may be identified with Bahal in District Jalgaon in Maharashtra State, which had a flourishing settlement from the chalcolithic to the early historical times.\10
Record B is painted in white on the first (rock-cut) rafter between the first and second ribs of the roof-vault of the cave, at a height of 4.11 m above the floor. It is in two lines, respectively 33 and 43 cm long, the range of the heights of the letters being the same as in Record A. At least two letters in the middle of the first line are indistinct. It says that the pasàdas were the gift of one Dhamadåva who was a pavajita or mendicant. The second word in the first line was perhaps another adjective of the donor and might have given the name of the place from which he came.
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1 This usual dynastic appellation of the earlier phase of Ajaíòà is being retained here without such larger questions as the date of the beginning of Sàtavàhana rule in the Deccan being raised.
2 G.Buhler in J. Burgess, Report on the Buddhist Cave Temples and their Inscriptions, Archaeological Survey of Western India, Vol. IV (1883), p. 116 and pl. LVI; correction by R. Otto Franke in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, band L (1896), p. 597. The word ghara-mukha has been appropriately translated as 'facade'. But mukha also means 'exit', cf. mukhaì niõsaraíaì, Amarakîøa, II, ii, 19, and therefore implicitly 'entrance' as well.
3 G.Yazdani, Ajanta, pt. III (Oxford, 1916), plates, pl. XXVIIIa, where, however, the painted record is not included.
4 N. P. Chakravarti in ibid., text, p. 91.
5 Ibid., pp. 86 and 90.
6 Above, Vol. VIII, p. 93, No. 22.
7 M. N. Deshpande in Ancient India, No. 15 (1959), p. 76.
8 Ibid., p. 82.
9 H. Luders, E. Waldschmidt and M.A. Mehendale, Bharhut Inscripttons, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, Vol. II, pt. II (Ootacamund, 1963), p. 33.
10 Indian Archaeology 1956-57 - A Review, ed. A. Ghosh (New Delhi, 1957), pp. 17-18. [The ancient name of Bàhal was Bahalàpurè from where the Mehunabare plates of Såndraka Vairadåva dated in 702 A. D. were issued, cf. above, Vol. XXXV, pp. 193-97.- Ed.]