Vedikā pillar, Kanaganahalli stūpa

Editor: Vincent Tournier.

Identifier: DHARMA_INSKnI00071.

Hand description:

Language: Middle Indo-Aryan.

Repository: Satavahana (tfb-satavahana-epigraphy).

Version: (3bfd35d), last modified (5615236).

Edition

⟨1⟩ (bho)gava(dha)nakasa bodhigahapatino ⟨2⟩ [pu]tasa Isimitasa pāyako sa⟨3⟩[s]uciko saĀlaṁbano deyadhama

Apparatus

⟨1⟩ (bho)gava(dha)nakasa ⬦ [bh](o)gavadhanikasa N+vH.

⟨2⟩ [pu]tasa ⬦ [va][ika]sa N+vH.

⟨3⟩ saĀlaṁbano ⬦ saĀlabano N+vH • The editors doubt Poonacha 2011’s suggestion (Poonacha 2011, p. 169, p. 471) that the term ālambana points to the coping. See also Nakanishi and von Hinüber 2014, p. 16, p. 60. Yet the word ālaṁbana occurs in KnI0231, which is of the very same type as the objects bearing KnI008591: these are edited under the heading uṣṇīṣa. Yet it is striking that the MIA unisa — or any other MIA form corresponding to Skt. uṣṇīṣa — common, for instance, in the Amaravati corpus is nearly absent from the Kanaganahalli corpus, as it is, for instance, in Sarnath, and that the single occurrence of the term Uṁnisa (KnI0044) occurs on a puphagahani and may point to a part of the casing. The term āla(ṁ)bana moreover occurs once on ca. 1st-c. BCE piece of “rail stone” found in Sarnath. See ASI–AR 1906–1907: 95 (Tsukamoto Keishō 塚本啓祥 1996, № Sarn 85). On the basis of the designation āla(ṁ)bana, Sten Konow who based his reading on the rubbing (Marshal and Konow 1911, plate XXX) assumed that “this stone was originally the lower horizontal stone of a rail.” But the object is described as a “coping stone … with rounded edge at the the top” in Sahni’s catalogue of the Sarnath museum (1914: 214–215, no. D(a) 39). Sahni further adds that “[i]t is curious that in the epigraph the coping stone is referred to as a base stone.” KnI0231 now proves that this is not an isolated case, and that ālaṁbana can not mean, in the context of Kanaganahalli or Sarnath, “base stone.” In the Mahāvastu, the term ālambana occurs alongside adhiṣṭhānaka as a qualifier of sūcika, the cross-bars fixed on the uprights (pādaka) in the description of the railings surrounding the city of Dīpavatī. See Mvu (S) I.194.20–195.4 / Ms. Sa, 54a3–5; Mvu (S) III.227.7–13 / (M) III.282.8–13. See also Divy 221.9–10. In light of the evidence Kanaganahalli, Edgerton’s understanding of ālambana (Edgerton 1953, s.v. [3]), should be revised: in these passages, while the adhiṣṭhānaka would point to the base of the vedikā, the ālambana could point to the crowning element holding together the railing.

Translation by Vincent Tournier

Commentary

Bibliography

Primary

[N+vH] Nakanishi, Maiko and Oskar von Hinüber. 2014. Kanaganahalli inscriptions. Annual report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University for the Academic Year 2013, Vol. 17, Supplement. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University. Page 60, section II.4, item 1.

[MASI] Poonacha, K. P. 2011. Excavations at Kanaganahalli (Sannati), taluk Chitapur, dist. Gulbarga, Karnataka. Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India 106. New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India. Page 452, item 16, plate CXXXI, item 6.