Page:The Buddhist Antiquities Of Nagarjunakonda MASI 54 Longhurst A. H..djvu/31

18 contributed to the structure. If she did build the stupa, then it was she who enshrined the relic found in the chamber; but it is impossible to believe that so great an event as this could have occurred without the fact being recorded in at least one of the many inscriptions referring to the stupa. We know that the monument was consecrated to the Buddha, as the inscriptions are quite clear on this point. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the relic recovered from the tomb represents a dhatu, or corporeal relic of the Great Teacher, otherwise ladies of royal blood, and the fact that pilgrims came from all over India and Ceylon to reverence it, afford testimony of this,

Unfortunately, the meaning of some of the words and phrases met with in the inscriptions is very obscure. Commenting upon this, Dr. Vogel says—“A considerable difficulty in the way. of interpreting the Nagarjunakonda inscriptions is the want of precision of which they show ample evidence. Considering that these inscriptions were meant to be perpetual records of pious donations made by ladies of royal blood, the careless manner in which they have been recorded is astonishing. Not only single syllables but whole words have been omitted.” Dr Hirananda Sastri, late Epigraphist to the Government who has also made a study of these inscriptions, found the same difficulty, and, as might be expected in the circumstances, his interpretation of the precise meaning of certain words differs from Dr. Vogel's. The records belonging to the Mahdchetiya open with an invocation to the Buddha, who is extolled in a long string of laudatory epithets. Dr, Hirdnanda Sastri is of opinion that the style and wording of the invocation shows that the Mahachetiya has been specified in these inscriptions as “ protected by the corporeal remains of the Buddha ”’ and that the genitive case is used here to discriminate this stupa from others not similarly consecrated. Nine ruined stupas were discovered at Nagarjunakonda, four of them highly decorated with stone bas-reliefs similar to those recovered from Amaravati, but the Mahachetiya is the only one bearing inscriptions indicating that it was consecrated to the Buddha.

The discovery of the relic and the fact that inscription B. 2 of Dr. Vogel’s List, definitely gives the name of the monument as the Mahachetiya of the Buddha, seem conclusive evidence that the monument was originally built to enshrine Some corporeal remains of the Buddha, as Dr. Hirananda Sastri maintains. The Stupa was probably built long before Chamtisiri set up the pillars and rebuilt the structure in the second century A.D., or thereabouts, which would explain why the inscriptions give no information about the consecration or how the relic was obtained. If the Mahachetiya did exist prior to the second century A.D., the fact that it contained corporeal remains of the Great Teacher would have been known throughout India and Ceylon, thus making it unnecessary to record this information jn inscriptions added to the monument in later times.