282 
T. Bloch — Buddhistic statue from Qrdvasti. 
[No. 4, 
Era. The statue is described as Bhagavato Qakyamunind 
(read :— munino) pratimd ; 
(3) An Inscription on a statue of Bnddha from Mankuar: Fleet, 
Gupta Inscriptions, p. 45. The Inscription is dated in the 
129 of the Gupta Era, corresponding to 448-449 A.D. 
The statue is described as Bhagavato samyak-sambuddhasya 
sva-mata-viruddhasya .. .pratimd ; 
(4) An Inscription under a figure of Buddha in the Kanheri 
Caitya Cave No. Ill: Arch. Surv. Rep. of Western India, 
Vol. V, p. 77, No. 6. The Inscription is written in 
characters of the Western alphabet of the 4th or 5th 
. century A.D. The figure is called Bhagavat-pratimd (line 
3 of inscription) ; 
(5) An Inscription on the base of a statue of Buddha from 
Sarnath, near Benares, now in Indian Museum: Fleet, 
Gupta Inscriptions, p. 281. The Inscription, on palseo- 
graphical grounds, may be allotted roughly to the 5th 
century A.D. The statue is labelled as pratimd Qdstuh. 
These are the only ancient Buddha statues, as far as I know, 
which contain Inscriptions giving us a clue as to the meaning of the 
image. But there is one remarkable statue still left which I have already 
been alluding to above. It is a statue of a seated Buddha from Budh 
Gaya, figured by General Cunningham in his Mahdbddhi, Plate XXV, 
and described ibid., p. 53. This statue is also now in the Indian 
Museum, but unfortunately an inspection of the original sculpture does 
not give any more help in deciphering the mutilated Inscription on the 
base. On the contrary, some more letters have still broken off, and not 
even the whole context of Cunningham’s facsimile is now to be found 
on the stone. But so much at least seems to me certain that its purport 
was to record the fact that a certain Bhiksu set up this statue of a 
Bodhisattva, who was represented as seated on a simhdsana , traces of 
which are still visible on the sculpture behind the neck of the figure. 
Thus, I believe, the words in line 2 of the Inscription, viz., Bodhisattva- 
pratimam simharathe pratisthdpayati are best accounted for. Here then 
again we have a statue of a Bodhisattva, not of a Buddha. 1 
How then is this discrepancy to be accounted for ? There is 
nothing in the head-dress to distinguish the Gaya Image from any 
1 I do not agree with General Cunningham referring the date 64 of line 1 of 
the Inscription to the 9 a ^a Era. The form of some letters of the Inscriptions, 
especially of sa, is much later and the true date probably lies 150 or 200 years 
behind. I am unable to make anything out of the name of the Maharaja men¬ 
tioned in the beginning of the record. 
