388 
Rajendralala Mitra —On the Pal a 
[No. 4, 
Its language is Sanskrit, and its extent 12 lines, of which the second breaks 
off in the middle after the word Samvat, and the third begins so as to leave 
some space at the beginning. This was done probably with a view to leave 
room enough for the date in figures or words ; but they were never put in. 
The jamb being made of hard basalt, and having been placed on the door 
side, deep behind a bToad portico or veranda, suffered not at all from the 
influence of the weather when in situ ; and, since the destruction of the 
temple, having remained buried under a large mass of rubbish, between 20 
and 30 feet deep, looks as fresh as when it was first turned out of the 
sculptor’s atillier. 
The subject of the record is a donation to the temple, but the nature 
of the gift is not apparent. The words used for the purpose are deya 
dharmoyam “ this is a religious gift,” and the pronoun therefore may apply 
to the stone on which it occurs, or to the gate of which the stone forms a 
part, or to the portico, or to the entire temple. The words, however, are 
generally used as a formula for expressing a gift, and the gift might be 
other than the substance on which they occur. Looking to the nature of 
the temple,—a brick structure cemented with clay and plastered with stucco, 
which had undergone several repairs, the plastering in many places being 
not in keeping with the mouldings formed of bricks, and the door-ways, apart 
from the stone-facings, being perfect and bearing marks of plastering 
under the stones—there is no doubt now that the temple existed from 
long before the time of the Pala Kings of Bengal, and the formula there¬ 
fore does not apply to it. General Cunningham takes the temple to date from 
the 1st century B. C. The donor was one Baladitya, a native of Kausambi 
in the Doab of the Ganges, the son of Gurudatta, and grandson of Hara- 
datta. He was a Buddhist by religion, a follower of the Mahay ana school, 
and a devout worshipper. He belonged to a clan of oil-sellers named Taila- 
dhaka. He had no pretension to royalty, but in religion, whether Hindu 
or Buddhist, it was not necessary for a devout person to have high social 
position, to make a religious gift in an ancient public temple. He claims 
no merit to himself for the gift, but desires that the fruit of it may 
promote “ the advancement of the highest (religious) knowledge among 
the mass of mankind.”* 
When I first read the inscription from a facsimile, I was disposed to take 
the date of this inscription to be the Samvat year 913 = A. I). 856. I made 
out the figures from three symbolical words : the first— agni, “ fire,” being 
equal to 3, the second rdgha , “ power,” = to 1 ; and the third dvara, ‘ door’ 
= 9. This would be equal to 319 ; but the practice invariably followed in 
explaining symbolical figures is to transpose them according to the well- 
known rule, anhasya vamd gait, “ figures run to the left,” and I had no 
* Ante XLI, pt. I, p. 310. 
