No. 35. — 1887.] notes on jatakas. 



203 



Buddha, although not represented by any figure ; for we know no 

 figure was made of him for some centuries after the rise of his 

 religion." 



As regards the inscription which accompanies the bas-relief, I must 

 of course abandon the emendation by which I proposed to insert 

 Bodhim after Bhagavato. There then remain two alternatives : either 

 there is a grammatical error in the inscription, or the word read 

 Bhagavato should be Bhagava{n)tam. A rubbing of the inscription 

 is a great desideratum. 



R. C. Childers. 



F. 



The Bharhut Sculptures.* 



38, Clanricarde Gardens, April 27, 1875. 

 Louis de Zoysa Mudaliyar has supplied me with two additional cor- 

 rections, one of some importance, the other involving an interesting 

 point of exegesis. First, the inscription read by General Cunningham 

 as Sudhamma Reva Sabha should be read Sudhamma devasabhd. The 

 emendation admits of no dispute, because, according to the Buddhist 

 texts, the devasabha, or council hall of the Trayastrinsa angels, is 

 named Sudhamma. Thus vanishes the theory of the inscription con- 

 taining the name of the patriarch Revata, who presided over the second 

 General Council of Buddhism. Secondly, the curious expression 

 Jcotisanthdrena does not mean " for a layer of ten millions," but " by 

 laying edge to edge." It is well known to Sanskrit scholars that hoti 

 has the two very different meanings of " edge " and u ten millions," 

 and it is in the former sense that the word is here used. The original 

 and oldest extant version of the story of J etavana is to be found in 

 the Chula Vagga of the Vinaya, a portion of the Buddhist canon ; and 

 in his great commentary on the Vinaya, Buddhaghosa explains Jcoti- 

 santhdrena by kotim Jcotim patipadetva, " putting edge to edge," by 

 which is meant that the coins were so close together that their edges 

 touched. Of course this correction does not in the slightest degree 

 impair the value of the discovery. It is interesting as removing a 

 certain tautology from the passage as I at first translated it, and 

 adding a new force to the expression, and also as illustrating the 

 extreme importance of Buddhaghosa's commentaries, without which we 

 should too often be driven into hopeless conjecture in dealing with the 

 oldest Buddhist texts. 



R. C. Childers. 



* Academy, May 1, 1875, pp. 451-5. 



83—88 h 



