J. F. Campbell Collection > Mathurá

THE GREEKS AT MATHURA. 73
the ' Kankali tila.' Transcripts and translations of many of the inscriptions
have been recently made by the learned Sanskrit scholar Babu Eajendra Lai
Mitra, and published in the Journal of the Calcutta Asiatic Society for 1870.
They are all brief votive records, giving only the name of the obscure donor,
accompanied by some stereotyped religious formula. The dates, which it
would be interesting to ascertain, are indicated by figures difficult to decipher,
and which when deciphered still leave uncertain the era intended. The Babu
concludes that they refer to the Saka era, beginning from 76 A. D. ; and if so,
they range between 120 and 206 A. D. ; but it is quite possible that they are
computed from some more exclusively Buddhist era, of which there were several
in use. The most numerous remains were portions of stone railing of the parti-
cular type used to enclose Buddhist shrines and monuments. These have been
collected in the grounds of the Agra Museum and roughly put together in
such a way as to indicate the original arrangement. Many of the pillars were
marked with figures as a guide to the builder ; and thus we learn that one set,
for they were of various sizes, consisted of at least as many as 129 pieces.
There were also found three large seated figures of Buddha, of which two were
full, the third a little less than life-size ; and the bases of some 30 large
columns. It was chiefly round these bases that the inscriptions were engraved.
One of the most noticeable fragments was a stone hand, measuring a foot across
the palm, which must have belonged to a statue not less than from 20 to 24 feet
in height. It would be interesting to unearth the remainder of this enormous
colossus. Most of the sculptures were executed in common red sandstone and
were of indifferent workmanship, in every way inferior to the specimens more
recently discovered at other mounds in the neighbourhood. The most artistic
was the figure of a dancing-girl rather more than half life-size, in a natural and
graceful attitude.* Like the so-called figure of Silenus, discovered by James
Prinsep in 1836, it was probably the work of a Greek artist : a conjecture
which involves no historical difficulty, since in the Yuga-Purana of the (xargi-
Sauhita, written about the year 50 B. C, it is explicitly stated that Mathura
was reduced by the Greeks, and that their victorious armies advanced into the
very heart of Hindustan, even as far as Patali-putra. The text is as followsf : —
so
* Two representations of this figure are given in Cunningham's Archajological Survey, Vol.
I., page 240.
t I q.iiote from Dr. Kern's Brihat Sanhita, for though several of the Mathura Pandits have
good collections of MSS., the genuine Gargi-Sanhita is so scarce a work that it is not to be
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