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BuddhistSaintsinAncientVedisa
MichaelWillis
JournaloftheRoyalAsiaticSocietyofGreatBritain&Ireland/Volume11/Issue02/July2001,pp219228 DOI:10.1017/S1356186301000244,Publishedonline:22October2001

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Buddhist Saints in Ancient Vedisa

MICHAEL WILLIS a The city of Vedisa (Skt Vidis ) was a pivotal centre on the ancient trade routes that followed the River Betwa from the Gangetic plain to the heart of central India.1 Surrounded by rich farmland, Vedisa was strategically sited at the conuence of the Betwa and Bes.2 A huge earthen rampart and moat, more than three kilometres in length, were built to defend the city's western side. The extent of the ancient city behind these fortications is indicated by large mounds, the most prominent of which are at Besnagar village (g. 1). A natural hill-fort a short distance to the south-east added greatly to the city's defences. Known as Lohangi Pr, the hill rises dramatically from the plain and is all but impregnable with its sheer cliffs and fortied gates. The top of the rock is covered with remains, the oldest fragment being a massive capital from the rst century BC. Lohangi Pr a is surrounded by modern Vidis but in the nineteenth century it was still in open country beside the walled medieval town. None of the buildings of ancient Besnagar have survived in a complete state but in the neighbouring hills there are well-preserved Buddhist monasteries and stu pas at Sa nch, Satdha ra, Sona ri, Bhojpur and Andher (g. 2). These sites were explored by Alexander Cunningham and F. C. Maisey in the mid-nineteenth century and many of their nds are now kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum. These nds, notably the inscribed reliquaries, need little introduction. They have long been recognised as important sources of information for the history of Buddhism and its local manifestations

1 The As okan inscription at Gujarra shows that there was movement up and down this corridor from early times; centuries later the Ra raku a armies followed the same route northward toward Ka lp and Kannauj; see M. Willis, Inscriptions of Gopaketra (London, 1996): p. 2 (inscription of VS 962) p. 108 (Gujarra ). The Mughals developed different roads to the Deccan, but the importance of the Betwa route was only partially diminished and continued into the colonial period; this helps explain why the districts of Lalitpur and Jhansi became part of UP. 2 A. Ghosh, An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology, 2 vols (New Delhi and Leiden, 1989): s.v. Besnagar. The a a river Vidis (modern Bes) is no doubt the source from which we can trace the various names of the town: Vidis , a, Vedisa, Vedisanagara, etc. D. C. Sircar, Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India (Delhi, 1971), Vaidis pp. 26465; B. C. Law, Historical Geography of Ancient India (Paris, 1954), p. 336. The name Bes may also owe ya (Pa oka's consort Dev was the daughter of a Vedisa merchant and thus vais something to Pa li vessa. As li vessa, see oka became king (for which see Mhvs 13: Dpvs 6:16 sehidhta devna ma 'ti ). As Dev continued at Vedisa after As 712; Dpvs 12:15; Thvs, p. 192), the name Vessanagara could date from that time. From Vessanagara, of course, there is no difculty deriving Besnagar and Bes. Bhilsa, the name of the modern town until the ancient name was revived, comes from the Parama ra-period Bha illasva min temple located there. Some additional notes in P. H. L. Eggermont, `Sanchi-Ka kana da and the Hellenistic and Buddhist Sources', in Gouriswar Bhattacharya, ed., a Deyadharma (Delhi, 1986), pp. 1127. In this essay we use Vedisa rather than Vidis except when referring to the modern town.

JRAS, Series 3, 11, 2 (2001), pp. 219 28

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Fig. 1 Plan of ancient Vedisa showing, in black, test pits excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Fig. 2 Map showing immediate environs of Vedisa.

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in the Vedisa region.3 However, an examination of the literature on this material reveals two problems. The rst is that the reliquary inscriptions are known mainly from Cunningham's hand copies. Subsequent scholars have not returned to the original records with the result that a number of incorrect readings have been perpetuated. A second problem is that Cunningham incorrectly identied some of the saints mentioned in the reliquary inscriptions and, as a consequence, muddled the relationship that existed between them. The Buddhist history of Sa nch and nearby sites is thus startlingly decient given that these monasteries owed their ancient prominence (and much of their present physical appearance) to the saints who lived, taught and died within their walls. The aim of the present article, therefore, is to consider the reliquary inscriptions afresh with special reference to the identity of the individual saints and the Buddhist schools to which they belonged. In all cases, readings have been checked against the actual inscriptions.4 The reliquary inscriptions present us with a confusing host of names but one individual who stands out is a teacher named Gotiputa. Relics of Gotiputa were found at Sa nch 5 (stu pa 2), Sona ri (stu pa 2) and Andher (stu pa 2). This includes all but one of the sites from which inscribed reliquaries have been recovered and is enough to demonstrate that Gotiputa was an important Buddhist master. That we are dealing with an individual with local ties is shown by the fact that Gotiputa's epithet was `Light of Sa nch' (ka kanava 6 pabha sana). This title would seem to indicate considerable eminence in spiritual matters, a point conrmed by the number of Gotiputa's disciples (ateva li anteva sin, Pa sin). Aside from unnamed novices, Gotiputa's disciples included Va chiya Suvijayita, Va chiputa and Mogaliputa.7 An inscription on a reliquary from Andher clearly states that Mogaliputa was a disciple of Gotiputa.8 Cunningham attempted to equate this Mogaliputa with the Moggaliputta Tissa of the Third Council (Mhv 5: 277 etc, 12:1).9 This was followed by Geiger who stated there is ``no doubt that by . . . Mogaliputa . . . is meant the Moggaliputta Tissa of the Ceylonese Chronicles.'' 10 This is impossible. The Mogaliputa of the reliquary inscriptions was a follower of Gotiputa, and Gotiputa had ties to Sa nch about oka. While this was recognised, albeit briey, by Lamotte in a century after the time of As 1976, Yamazaki Gen'ichi, writing in 1982, accepted Geiger's identication of Mogaliputa and suggested that the legends were recast to shift the source of Sri Lankan Buddhism from
3 Alexander Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes (London, 1854). The most widely used listing which includes the reliquary records is H. Lu ders, `A List of Bra hm Inscriptions from the Earliest Times to About AD 400', Epigraphia Indica 10 (1912); appendix (hereinafter simply Lu ders). Some of the reliquary inscriptions were re-edited by N. G. Majumdar in J. Marshall and A. Foucher (with epigraphic notes by N. G. Majumdar), The Monuments of Sanchi, 3 vols. (London, 1940); these rereadings were based on photographs but Majumdar did not have pictures of the objects in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A objects do not seem to have been epigraphically revisited until the present author began to study them in 1997. 4 I would record my thanks to colleagues at the Victoria and Albert Museum who graciously tolerated my visits and facilitated my study of the collections; I would also thank the Trustees of the British Museum and my department for supporting my research on this topic. 5 Lu ders, nos. 663 (Sa nch); 156 (Sona ri); 681 (Andher). The names of the sites are taken from nearby villages or the names given to the places by the local people. Apart from Sa nch the ancient names of the stu pa sites have not been traced. 6 Lu ders, no. 681. The original inscription reads -nava, not -na va. 7 Lu ders, no. 658, 659, 680, 682. The reading of no. 659 is: ka kanavapabha sa sihana da na, i.e. Gift of the pupils of the ``Light of Sa nch'' (ka kanava pabha sa) [i.e. Gotiputa]. 8 Lu ders, no. 682. 9 Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes, p. 293. 10 Wilhelm Geiger, The Mahavasa (London, 1912), p. xx.

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oka and the Mauryan court.11 This does violence to the western and central India to As sources and is not compatible with the Sona ri inscriptions which corroborate the Third Council missionary programme (as demonstrated below). Working on the assumption that when all else fails we should take the obvious explanation, the fact is that the Mogaliputa of the Sa nch inscription simply had the same name as the celebrated Buddhist leader of the Mauryan period. Returning to Gotiputa, the reliquary inscriptions also tell us that he belonged to the Koin agota and, more importantly, that he was a follower of the Hemavata school.12 There is disagreement about how the Buddhist schools and sects should be classied and at what time they appeared, but most Buddhist sources regard the Hemavatas (or Haimavatas) as close to the Sthavirava das (Therava das in the southern tradition).13 In any event, a clear link between the Hemavatas and the Vedisa region is documented by stu pa 2 at Sona ri. In this stu pa there was a large steatite vase containing ve inscribed reliquaries.14 The names on these reliquaries parallel those given in the textual accounts of the Buddhist mission that was sent to the Hima layas after the Third Council. The information from these sources is best summarised in tabular form (see table 1). Although table 1 is self-explanatory, some comments on apparent discrepancies are in la order. The inscription on one of the Sona ri reliquaries gives the name A bagra. This person is not immediately identiable. However, as all the reliquaries from the stu pa were placed inside a single urn, the implication seems to be that they were related in some way. Now it is clear that two of the reliquaries in the stu pa contained the remains of Majhima and Ka sapagota, Buddhist missionaries known to have travelled to the Hima layas after the Third Council. According to the Mhbvs (p. 115) and Sa vs (p. 169), they were accompanied lakadeva or Alavakadeva. The manuscripts by other monks, one of whom was named A lakadeva, Alakadeva, Alakareva and Alavakadeva.15 The word give the following variants: A laka, -deva is frequently appended to names and is usually optional, so we are left with A Alaka or Alavaka. The ending -ka is added to many nouns and adjectives to make others of la, Ala or the same meaning; thus it too may be regarded as non-essential.16 This leaves A pa-8 or A la Alava. The rst of these appears as A -ba gira in the reliquary inscription from Sa nch, as noted in the right-hand column of table 1. As to the variant Alava, the confusion of c and o is so common in Indian languages that it needs no special remark. It would la seem, therefore, that the A ba-gira of the present reliquary inscription is the same as the
11 Etienne Lamotte, Histoire du Bouddhisme Indien (Louvain, 1976), p. 334; Gen'ichi, `The Spread of Buddhism in the Mauryan Age with Special Reference to the Mahinda Legend', Acta Asiatica 42 (1982), pp. 116. The source of Yamazaki Gen'ichi's errors is Frauwallner, The Earliest Vinaya, p. 18 whose arguments he has simply embroidered. History of Ceylon, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Colombo, 1959), p. 130 follows Geiger; Gregory Schopen, Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks (Honolulu, 1997), p. 199, n. 61 seems undecided on this specic point. 12 Lu ders, nos. 156; 681. 13 Useful accounts of the schools are in W. Geiger, The Mahavasa or the Great Chronicle of Ceylon (London, 1912), appendix B and Lamotte, Histoire du Bouddhisme, pp. 571606. Lamotte (p. 333) began the process of equating the Hemavata inscriptions with the textual accounts of the school but this work is incomplete. 14 An attractive drawing of these by Maisey is preserved in the British Library: OIOC WD 546 folio 2c. The vase is in the Victoria and Albert Museum and often illustrated, for example B. Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1970), gure 53; M. Taddei, `The First Beginnings: Sculpture on Stupa 2,' in Unseen Presence (Bombay, 1996), gure 2. 15 See note 17 where the relevant texts are given. 16 W. D. Whitney, Sanskrit Grammar (Cambridge, 1889), 1222.

Buddhist Saints in Ancient Vedisa Table 1. Hemavata teachers according to Pa li texts and reliquary inscriptions at Sona ri and Sa nch
Hemavata teachers known from Pa li texts17 Majjhima Kassapagota lavakadeva A Sahadeva Dundubhissara Reliquaries at Sona ri, stu pa 2 Names as given in inscriptions Majhima Koiniputa (Lu ders, no. 157) Kotputa Ka sapagota (Lu ders, no. 158) la A bagira (Lu ders, no. 160) Kosikiputa (Lu ders, no. 159) Gotiputa Dudubhisara-da ya da (Lu ders, no. 156) Reliquaries at Sa nch, stu pa 2 Names as given in inscriptions Majhima / Koinputa (Lu ders, nos. 656; 661) Ka sapagota (Lu ders, no. 655) pa(=A la?)gira A (Lu ders, no. 660)18 Koskiputa (Lu ders, no. 662) Gotiputa (Lu ders, no. 663)

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laka-8 Alavaka-deva etc. of the Pa A li texts. One remaining problem is the name Mu lakadeva in the Dpvs. How could we possibly account for such a marked difference as laka- (or Alaka- )? A plausible explanation, in my view, is found in the form Mu laka- and A of the relevant letters before the eighth century. The Gupta and Post-Gupta forms of vk and ew are sufciently similar that an early misreading could have given rise to the name Mu lakadeva. Table 2 provides a few examples of mu la- and a la- as testied by north Indian inscriptions.19 These letters suggest that the name Mu lakadeva is a scribal error that originated in the fth century (or shortly thereafter) and that the source of the error was vanished manuscript material from western or central India. Turning to the remaining names from Sona ri given in table 1, there is no denying that the epigraphic and manuscript traditions do not agree when it comes to Sahadeva. In this case, the name Koskiputa on the reliquaries can be explained, in all probability, as a metronymic. This is suggested by Kotputa Ka sapagota where the name Kotputa is not preserved in the Pa li texts (see table 1). Finally, the relics of the Hemavata teacher Dundubhissara do not seem to have been available to the Buddhist community in central India, a situation which obliged them to use Gotiputa as a substitute. Justication for this is found in the phrase dudubhisarada ya da, `spiritual heir of Dudubhisara', the sole instance of such an expression in the Vedisa inscriptions.
17 In this article abbreviations and editions of texts follow T. W. Rhys Davids and William Stede, Pali-English Dictionary (London, 192125). Kassapagotto ca yo thero majjhimo durabhisaro sahadevo mu lakadevo himavante yakkhaganam pasa (Dpvs 8:10); majjhimatthero pana kassapagotto alakadevo [alavakadevo; alakareva] dayam [duddhabhiyo] sahassadevo [maha dundubhissaro gantva revo] ti catu hi therehi saddhim himavantadesa bha gam , etc (Mhbvs, p. 115). The Sa vs, composed in Burma during mid-nineteenth century, gives: majjhimathero ca kassapagottatherena a himavantapadese etc. lakadevatherena duddabhiyatherena maha revatatherena ca saddhim (p. 169). 18 The reading of the name is clear enough but it seems that the scribe was forced to drop the case endings and skip one syllable of the name for want of space; given this casual attitude it does not seem unlikely that he changed y into i by reversing the letter, the bra hm forms for y and i being near mirror images of each other. 19 I am grateful to Richard Salomon who suggested that this line of investigation might produce useful results. The letter forms in table 2 are drawn from A. H. Dani, Indian Palaeography (Oxford, 1963).

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Table 2. Different forms of mu la- (left) and a la- (right) as testied by epigraphic records
a (2nd-3rd century) Andhrades Ma lwa (5th-6th century) N. Deccan (5th-6th century) Magadha (8th century)

Table 3. Additional names given in reliquary inscriptions at Sa nch and Andher.

Reliquaries at Sa nch, stu pa 2 Names as given in inscriptions Ha ritputa (Lu ders, no. 657) Mogaliputa (Lu ders, no. 664) Va chiya Suvijayita, pupil of Goti[puta] (Lu ders, no. 658) Mahavana ya (Lu ders, no. 660) Reliquaries at Andher Names as given in inscriptions Ha ritiputa (Lu ders, no. 683) Mogaliputa, pupil of Gotiputa (Lu ders, no. 682) Va chiputa, pupil of Gotiputa (Lu ders, no. 680)

At Sa nch stu pa 2, the physical disposition of the relics was less straightforward. Inside the relic chamber there were four reliquaries placed in a stone box. The reliquaries, all inscribed, show that the bones of different individuals were actually mixed together. This potentially confusing situation is claried by the right column of table 1 which shows that the same Hemavata relics were deposited at Sona ri and Sa nch. There were, however, additional deposits and names at Sa nch and yet more at Andher. This information can again be organised in tabular form (see table 3). With regard to the names in table 3, there seems no reason to doubt that Ha ritiputa and Ha ritputa are the same person; the same holds for the two references to Mogaliputa. In contrast, Va chiputa and Va chiya Suvijayita seem to be different persons; in any event both were followers of Gotiputa, the Buddhist master with whom we opened this discussion.20 Of Mahavana ya nothing further seems to be known. As with the original Hemavatas given in table 1, the total number of worthies is ve, the minimum required for the conferral of higher ordination in outlying areas and for dealing with certain Vinaya offences within the
20 As kindly pointed out to me by Richard Salomon, it is possible that Vachiya is a metronymic; if this suggestion is true then Suvijayita can be taken as the second part of the name. The same pattern, of course, has already been noted in Table 1. There is insufcient evidence to decide the question with nality. Va chiputa appears to have had a relative, perhaps a brother and fellow monk, who made a donation at Sa nch, Marshall, Monuments of Sanchi, inscription number 809. The exact nd-spot of this record is unfortunately not given. Probably the same monk Isika is recorded, ibid., inscription number 257 (cross-bar of stu pa 1 railing).

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monastic boundary (sma ) or residence (a va sa).21 The importance of ve monks is perhaps attributable to the tradition that the Buddha won ve converts as a result of the rst sermon at Sa rna th and that these ve formed his rst community of monks. Some further observations can be made on the above information and tables. The rst point is that the Hemavata reliquaries were all found in secondary stu pas. At Sona ri and Andher these stu pas were built outside the walls which surrounded the largest stu pas; at Sa nch, the stu pa in question was set up at the base of the hill, well away from the main monuments. Why this should be so is explained by nds at Sa nch and Satdha ra. At these sites there are two large stu pas, both established in the Mauryan period and subsequently enlarged. Smaller stu pas directly beside the large ones yielded reliquaries inscribed with the names Sa riputa and Maha mogala na.22 This of course refers to the Buddha's premier disciples who are frequently mentioned in Buddhist literature (Sa riputta and Moggalla na in a Pa li and S riputra and Maudgalya na in Sanskrit). Now the Vinaya Kudrakavastu of the a Mu lasarva stiva da nika ya preserved in Tibetan states that stu pas of S riputra and Maudgalya na should be built beside the stu pa of the Buddha in such a way as to replicate the seating position they occupied when the Master was alive; the stu pas of other elders should be placed according to their relative seniority.23 This provides textual authority for what has long been supposed, namely that the main stu pas at Sa nch and Satdha ra contained (and indeed probably still contain) the relics of the Buddha himself. This text also helps explain why the relics of the Hemavata teachers and their pupils were placed outside the main monastic precinct. Despite their obvious importance, the Hemavatas were considerably later and less illustrious than the Buddha and his circle. In addition to helping to explain the physical arrangement of the stu pas at Sa nch and Satdha ra, the reliquary inscriptions shed light on the Buddhist history of the region. The nature of the Buddhist schools around Vedisa in Mauryan times is not known, but after the collapse of Mauryan power the monasteries appear to have suffered a setback and there is a hiatus of about a century in terms of monumental remains.24 The precise date of renewed building activity is uncertain, but regardless of the absolute chronological position of the additions, a key point that emerges is that the reinvigoration of Sa nch and neighbouring sites took place with the arrival of the Hemavata school. The tables given above show that the monasteries clustered around Vedisa were closely linked in the second and rst century BC. We are not dealing with a variety of masters and schools, but with a tightly knit group, all Hemavatas and all associated with the person of Gotiputa.25 It seems likely
21 I. B. Horner, The Book of Discipline, 6 vols (London, 193866) 2, p. xii; E. Frauwallner, The Earliest Vinaya and the Beginnings of Buddhist Literature (Rome, 1956), pp. 91, 134; Charles Prebish, A Survey of Vinaya Literature (Taipei, 1994), pp. 7, 15 n. 45. 22 Lu ders, nos. 667; 668; 152; 153. These reliquaries are not in the national collections of Great Britain. 23 The importance of this text was rst noticed in G. Roth, `Symbolism of the Buddhist Stu pa', in A. Dallapiccola, ed., The Stu pa: Its Religious and Historical Signicance (Wiesbaden, 1980), pp. 18385; further discussion in Schopen, Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks, p. 165. After writing this passage I nd that similar observations about the placement of the Sa nch stu pas have been made in Schopen, `Ritual Rights and Bones of Contention: More on Monastic Funerals and Relics in the Mu lasarva stiva da Vinaya', Journal of Indian Philosophy 22 (1994), p. 55. I am grateful to Gregory Schopen for sending me an offprint of this interesting article. 24 Debala Mitra, Sanchi, 3rd ed. (Delhi, 1973), p. 6; Marshall, Monuments of Sanchi, 1: 23, also see 2: plate 7 okan column that were revealed by excavation. which shows the post-Mauryan accumulations around the As 25 This statement is made with reference to relic deposits; a wide range of donations are documented by

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that Gotiputa was responsible for bringing the Hemavata relics to the area; his disciples, the inscriptions make clear, organised the deposition of these relics and those of Gotiputa himself. Gotiputa may also have been responsible for `importing' the relics of Sa riputta and Moggalla na in view of the fact that the reliquaries and inscriptions in these stu pas are coeval. This has important historical implications for the popularisation of the cult surrounding these arahants. There is no archaeological evidence for Mauryan-period activity at Sona ri, Bhojpur and Andher, and we are probably safe in assuming that these places were established as a result of Hemavata activity in the second and rst century BC. Recent discoveries at Bhojpur conrm this supposition. Although I have not had the opportunity of examining the inscription at leisure, a reliquary recently found by the Archaeological Survey of India in stu pa 3 at Bhojpur appears to bear the name Ha ritiputa. This would be the same individual who is named in the Sa nch 2 and Andher inscriptions (see table 3). Ha ritiputa was probably one of Gotiputa's disciples. The position of stu pa 3 at Bhojpur is shown in the accompanying plan (g. 3). The appearance of a second-generation Hemavata in the central group of stu pas at Bhojpur indicates that the neighbouring monuments also belonged to them. The most prominent monument at Bhojpur, stu pa 1, could have contained remains of Sa riputta and Moggalla na but relics of the Buddha may be excluded as a possibility. The archaeological material and inscriptions discussed in the foregoing paragraphs represent a small but fascinating chapter in the history of Indian Buddhism, for they suggest that a `second propagation' took place in the post-Mauryan epoch, a propagation in which the arrival of `new' relics played a key role.26 As to the later history of the Hemavata line (a chiputa et al, inscriptions and texts appear to be silent. Ta rana tha, cariya parampara ) after Va however, reports that the Buddhist schools were intact in the time of Vasubandhu but that an after the campaigns of S kara ca rya (i.e. the eighth century) a number were extinguished, 27 among them the Hemavatas. Anti-Buddhist campaigns of the period can also be traced in the archaeological record.28 The original seat of Gotiputa is unknown and we can only guess where he might have acquired the Hemavata relics. It seems likely, however, that Gotiputa hailed from one of the main Buddhist centres in the Gangetic plain. Insufcient attention has been paid to the
inscription, showing that while Gotiputa and his followers were the driving force behind new activity, they in no way excluded gifts from other spiritual lineages. For example, ibid., inscription numbers 118, 214, 242, 270. 26 On this point I thus nd myself in disagreement with Frauwallner, The Earliest Vinaya, pp. 1819, where he concludes that the Hemavata mission began in Vedisa and that the relics were returned `home' after the missionaries died. His conclusions rest on a misunderstanding of saintly relics in Buddhism (see his p. 19, n.1). Unfortuately these views have been the source of some mischief, see note 11 above. In a lapse astonishing for such a remarkably careful scholar, Frauwallner (pp. 1419) ignored the interpretations of Cunningham, Fleet et al. and erroneously took the relics of Gotiputa to be those of Dudubhisara himself. The date generally attributed to stu pa 3 at Sa nch suggests that the relics of Sa riputta and Moggalla na were also brought to Vedisa by Gotiputa; this has important implications for the history of the cult of these arhants. A post-Mauryan age for the establishment of Bhojpur is conrmed by recent discoveries there. 27 Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, ed., Taranatha's History of Buddhism in India, translated from the Tibetan by Lama Chimpa and Alaka Chattopadhyaya (Simla, 1970), p. 228. Hemavata texts seem to have been known in Sri Lanka to the fourteenth-century author of the Nika ya Sagraha, see Nandasena Mudiyanse, Mahayana Monuments in Ceylon (Colombo,1967), pp. 1617. 28 See Giovanni Verardi, `Religion, Rituals and the Heaviness of Indian History', Annali (Istituto Universitario Orientale) 56 (1996), p. 232.

Fig. 3 Plan of Bhojpur near Murel Khurd showing principle monuments and paved foot-paths.

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archaeology of the Buddhist schools, but a Kua na-period seal reading ayana hemavatana `of 29 the noble Hemavatas' was found at Sanksa . On the textual side, Mathura and Sa vatth emerge as possibilities given that relics of Sa riputta were deposited in stu pas at these places.30 Before leaving the question of Gotiputa, I would like to consider his probable date. This cannot be determined with much precision but we can work back to a likely time from the archaeological record, particularly the links between the relic deposits, inscriptions and structural remains. As a starting point we can begin with the probable assumption that the relics were placed inside the stu pas not long before the railings were added. Now the relics in stu pa 2, as already noted in some detail, included Gotiputa and his disciples, which means (to state the painfully obvious) that Gotiputa and his followers were dead, cremated and deposited by the time the stu pa was built and decorated. If we take Gotiputa and his disciples as representing a generation in chronological terms, we can posit about twenty ve or thirty years between Gotiputa's death and the construction of the monument. This assumes, of course, that the stu pa was built soon after the last of Gotiputa's direct disciples had passed away. Now if we subscribe to the generally accepted view that the railings of stu pa 2 belong in the closing years of the second century BC, then it follows that Gotiputa must have died at Sa nch about thirty years before.31 Bearing in mind that Gotiputa bore the epithet `Light of Sa nch', we must factor in a few more years, perhaps as much as a decade, for Gotiputa's period of residence in the Sa nch viha ra. This means that Gotiputa should have arrived at Sa nch in the mid-second century BC. This is only an approximate guess, but even allowing a decade or so either way, we are left with something like a century between Gotiputa and the original Hemavata teachers. In my view this helps explain the expression dudubhisarada ya da. If Gotiputa had been taught directly by the original Hemavatas then the inscriptions would probably not have used the term da ya da (i.e. sa sanada ya da) to describe him.32
29 H. Sastri, `Sankisa Excavations', in Sir Asutosh Memorial Volume, 2 pts (Patna, 1926 and 28) 1, pp. 22836; the script as early Kua author describes the na. Frauwallner, The Earliest Vinaya, pp. 19, 2122, provides an exemplary regard to the schools (even if we are forced to disagree with a few of his combination of texts and inscriptions with conclusions). The coordination of text and inscription is thus hardly a new method; equally Frauwallner recognised (ibid., pp. 137, 141 etc) that there was a tendency to mutually complete and adapt different collections of scripture and that textual agreement is the result of a late process of unication; compare Schopen, Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks, pp. 267. 30 For Mathura, Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, p. 89; for Savatth and the rst stupa of Sariputta, G. Roth, ``Symbolism of the Buddhist Stu pa'', pp. 18385. I am grateful to Ven. D. Somarathana Thero for bringing Sa vatth to my attention in this regard and more generally for his wise guidance in Buddhist matters. 31 Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty in The Dictionary of Art (London, 1996) 15, p. 429 for the date of the sculpture of Sa nch stu pa 2. The date of this sculpture has been a subject of debate but I accept Chakravarty's assessment as the most balanced and convincing. 32 Lu ders, no. 156: the reading is dudubhisarada ya dasa.