Octagonal pillar from Kesanapalli — reign of Vāsiṭṭhīputta Siri-Cāntamūla, year 13 author of digital edition Arlo Griffiths Vincent Tournier DHARMA Paris DHARMA_INSEIAD00003

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 2019-2025 Octagonal pillar from Kesanapalli — reign of Vāsiṭṭhīputta Siri-Cāntamūla, year 13 Arlo Griffiths Arlo Griffiths Vincent Tournier Stefan Baums Ingo Strauch assistance with XML encoding and metadata verification Chloé Chollet assistance with XML encoding and metadata verification Marine Schoettel digital humanities consultant Emmanuelle Morlock digital humanities consultant Andrew Ollett

First digital edition made by École française d'Extrême-Orient (Paris, France), realized in collaboration with the HiSoMA Research Centre (Lyon, France) and hosted by TGIR Huma-Num (France) as Early Inscriptions of Āndhradeśa, in 2015-2017.

Early Inscriptions of Āndhradeśa DHARMA_INSEIAD00003

Copyright (c) 2017 by Stefan Baums, Arlo Griffiths, Ingo Strauch and Vincent Tournier.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

 DHARMAbase EFEO EIAD 3 Amaravathi Museum and Interpretation Centre AM-42

The project DHARMA has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no 809994).

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 EIAD file transformed to follow the DHARMA encoding structure. Metadata extracted to be checked and updated according DHARMA workflow. Done through XSLT.
vāsiṭhīputasa siricāṁtamūlasa saṁvacharaṁ 103hemaṁtonaṁ 1diva 1mahāraṭhisa gāme niḍiṁgale nigājasa bahusutīyānaṁ mūlavasiviharacetike gaṁ budhisa putehi vānikinīya haṁgāya putehi vāṇijakehi mahācaṁdena cula sasehi ca nīgasaṁbaṁdhīvagehi Ekato hotuṇa mahācetike budhinikhaṁbho patiṭhapito
hemaṁtonaṁhemaṁtānaṁ pakhaṁWe suggest emending instead hemaṁtapakhaṁ, taking into consideration the likely miswriting of naṁ for khaṁ, and the omission of pa. Alternatively, the intended text might have been the abbreviated hemaṁta pa.niḍiṁgaleniḍigale-vihara--vihāra-gaṁThe akṣara gaṁ, still visible on the estampage, is now covered by concrete. It is possible to restore here gaṁ(dhakuḍi), cf. EIAD 97, l. 3. (n. 10) proposes instead gaṁ(jikūṭavathavasa vaṇijakasa), after EIAD 2, ll. 4-5.vāṇijakehivaṇijakehiculaThese two akṣaras, still visible on the estampage, are now covered by concrete.nīga-One may tentatively understand this word as deriving from nija(ka). Cf. EIAD 54, l. 1: svajanasaṁbandhivargena.Ekato hotuṇaekatahetunoCf. EIAD 105, l. 9: Ekato hotūna.

13th year of (King) Vāsiṭṭhīputta Siri-Cāntamūla 1st (fortnight) of winter, 1st day.

At the village of Niḍiṁgala ... of the governor, at the shrine of the Mūlavāsivihāra of the school of the Bahuśrutīyas, the merchants Mahācanda and Cūla ... — sons of Budhi, the ... and of the merchant-wife Haṅgā — having united with ... and the groups of their own relatives, established a pillar for Budhi at the Great Shrine.

budhinikhaṁbhoWe follow here one of the suggestions offered by : 316, namely to analyze this compound as budhi-nikhaṁbha and to interpret the first part as pointing to the donors’ father. The term nikhaṁbha (Skt. niṣkambha) may be taken as a variant of *vikhaṁbha (Skt. viṣkambha, cf. MW, s.v. niṣkambha), whose meaning we tentatively take here to be identical to the more common khaṁbha. The fact that the dedicatee’s name was attached to the pillar being established suggests it had a commemorative function.

Three editions of this inscription were published almost simultaneously by : 2, , and . The latter is the most reliable. Part of the text is currently hidden by cement, so besides autopsy and our own photos of the stone, we rely for this re-edition on published photographs.

: no. 2: no. Kesa 16: 178 (no. 1): 70-1 (no. 3)