Dániel Balogh Inscriptions of the Aulikaras and Their Associates Beyond Boundaries
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Dániel Balogh Inscriptions of the Aulikaras and Their Associates Beyond Boundaries Religion, Region, Language and the State Edited by Michael Willis, Sam van Schaik and Lewis Doney Volume 4 Dániel Balogh Inscriptions of the Aulikaras and Their Associates Published with support of the European Research Council Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State (Project No. 609823) ISBN 978-3-11-064472-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-064978-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-064664-1 ISSN 2510-4446 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019935305 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019, Dániel Balogh published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston The book is published with open access at www.degruyter.com. Cover image: “Lintel,” circa 475 CE, in Sārnāth, Uttar Pradesh, India. Photograph by Michael Willis. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Preface So, here is another book on the timeless theme of “Inscrip- to this shift, and partly to the fact that ample inscriptional tions of [insert your preferred obscure dynasty here].” and material evidence of their doings remains for us to Almost all of the inscriptions gathered in this volume study productively. But when even the “maps and chaps” have been edited and published before, some more than building blocks of historical research are equivocal – as is a century and a quarter ago and many by such demigods definitely the case with the Aulikaras – it is essential that of Indic epigraphy as John Faithfull Fleet, Dines Chandra further research, even (or especially) of highly abstract Sircar and Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi. More recently, Auli- ideas, rest on as solid a foundation as can be obtained in kara inscriptions have been surveyed and discussed in order for us to be able to “tease out what we can from the articles such as one by Joanna Williams (1972, 50–52) on admittedly slim corpus of material that survives” (Talbot the art of Mandsaur, which focuses on nine inscriptions 2001, 11). Such a foundation, in the present case, consists out of those known at the time; and Richard Salomon’s largely in the nitty-gritty epigraphy, and this brings us to (1989) seminal treatise on epigraphic sources for Aulikara the second set of my reasons for undertaking this book. history, which discusses twenty-two inscriptions commis- As noted above, some Aulikara inscriptions have sioned by Aulikaras, their possible affiliates, and Hūṇas. been known for a long time and edited by great scholars. N. K. Ojha (2001) has even written a monograph on the Further inscriptions have come to light time and again, Aulikaras and their inscriptions. Moreover, Hans Bakker and these subsequent discoveries clarified some aspects has re-translated several of these inscriptions and dis- of the context of the earlier ones. Thus, the first Auli- cussed them with a fresh eye for a compendium of sources kara inscription known to scholarship was the Gangdhar relevant to the study of Asian Huns, currently in prepara- inscription of Mayūrākṣaka (A4; usually referred to as an tion (Balogh forthcoming). inscription of Viśvavarman), but nobody at the time was This being the case, is there really a point to the com- aware of it being an Aulikara inscription, or indeed of the pilation of a book on Aulikara inscriptions? Needless to existence of a family named Aulikara. Fleet learned of this say, my own answer to my rhetorical question is of course inscription as early as 1883, but did not hasten to publish a resounding “yes.” My personal fascination with the Auli- it. He did include an edition in his Corpus Inscriptionum karas started while I was researching the textual and his- Indicarum volume III, and the text did receive consider- torical context of Viśākhadatta’s play the Mudrārākṣasa able scholarly attention in the century-and-a-third since for my doctoral thesis (Balogh 2015). But subjective then, yet no-one in all this time has ventured to re-edit matters aside, I primarily see two – interconnected – sets this voluminous and important epigraph. Other early dis- of reasons why such a book can be a useful addition to the coveries received a larger share of immediate attention. In body of scholarship at the present time. 1879, Arthur Sulivan chanced upon one of Yaśodharman’s The first set has to do with what might be termed a victory pillars in Sondhni, and sent a copy of their inscrip- paradigm shift in the study of Indian history and cultural tion to Alexander Cunningham. The drawing reached history and the role of epigraphy on this stage. Major Fleet in 1883, and the men he sent to the site in 1884 not powers, such as the imperial Guptas and the Vākāṭakas only obtained good rubbings of both the intact and the in the Gupta period or Harṣavardhana shortly afterward, broken pillar inscription (A11 and A12), but also discov- have been examined and re-examined from an endless ered the inscription of the silk weavers (A6; often mislead- number of angles: first with political history – rulers, ingly called an inscription of Kumāragupta and Bandhu- dates, conquest and succession – as the primary focus; varman) in the process. Peter Peterson only refrained from then, increasingly, with an interest in less tangible facts editing the latter out of respect for Fleet, who duly pub- such as ideology, political structures and overarching cul- lished his own editions of both these epigraphs in 1886 tural frameworks. With the rising trend of studies in fringes and re-published both in the Corpus two years later; after and plurality, and with a view of history as a dialogical another two years Georg Bühler came out with another process in which a large number of agents of varying com- edition of the silk weaver inscription.1 plexity mutually determine themselves and one another, comes a shift in focus from superpowers to their lesser contemporaries. Dynasties in the Gupta penumbra, such 1 See the Description of each inscription in Part II for details and as the rulers of Valkhā, the Aulikaras and the Maitrakas, bibliographic references; and in particular, page 87 for Peterson’s are being increasingly subjected to scrutiny thanks partly words about the silk weaver inscription. Open Access. © 2019 Dániel Balogh, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110649789-202 VI Preface The fourth early bird was the Mandsaur inscription of research on a commentary and translation written over Nirdoṣa (A10, usually called an inscription of Yaśodhar- a century ago, and in many details outdated for several man or of Yaśodharman and Viṣṇuvardhana), which came decades. Yet in order to be able to engage in “informed to Fleet’s attention in 1885 and was published by him in speculation” (Inden, Walters, and Ali 2000, 14) about the 1886 (and then again in the Corpus). It was in this inscrip- way texts articulate history and engage in discourse and tion that the name Aulikara was first read by modern eyes, polemics, we need not only to learn as much as possible but Fleet (or anyone else) did not know this was a proper about their historical and textual context but to have the name and believed it to be a word for the emblem of the groundwork in place about the texts themselves. Due to dynasty.2 the relatively small size of the epigraphic corpus and the Next, discovered in 1912, the Mandsaur inscription of almost complete lack of a living tradition supplementing the time of Naravarman (A1) provided the first genealogy these texts, this is a particularly important point in the of the Early Aulikaras spanning more than two genera- case of inscriptions. tions3; but only after the discovery of the Bihar Kotra stone Even accomplished Sanskritists who reach to a pub- inscription (A2) in 1938 did it become known that Aulikara lished edition and draw their own conclusions from the (or Olikara) was a family name used in this dynasty. The primary source rather than from the accompanying trans- realisation that the later ruler Yaśodharman must have lation and introduction, may occasionally be misled by been connected in some way to this Aulikara dynasty the occasional error in the original edition. Like Homer, inevitably brought about a revision of the fifty-year-old even Fleet and Sircar nod every now and then. It is also hypothesis that aulikara was a common noun describing sometimes the case that the great scholars of old did a family emblem.4 As for Yaśodharman himself, scholars not have the facility to study an epigraph first-hand and continued to view him as an isolated entity, since nothing had to rely on inked impressions. While a good rubbing was known about his antecedents apart from the vague can often reveal details of an inscription that are hard to connection by name to the Early Aulikara rulers. The pre- discern in a gloomy museum storeroom (and even harder vailing opinion about him became that “[h]e rose and fell on a photograph taken in unfavourable light conditions), like a meteor between A.D. 530 and 540” (Majumdar 1954, one can also distort reality, for instance by hiding the 40). Indeed, the term “meteoric” remained in vogue as a distinction between a carefully incised grapheme and sort of epitheton ornans for Yaśodharman right until 1983.