Kharavela

The inscription

The Hathigumpha inscription is cut into the brow of a cave on Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar, in Prakrit and Brahmi, and runs to seventeen lines. It gives a year-by-year account of Kharavela's reign: his education, his accession, public works at his capital, military campaigns westward and southward, and religious endowments including caves cut for Jain mendicants.

It also records his recovery of a Jain image that a Nanda king had earlier carried off from Kalinga, which places both the image and the earlier removal in the historical record.

Dating

The inscription is damaged and its date formula disputed, which has left Kharavela's period argued across roughly two centuries, from the second century BCE to the first century CE. A reference to a king of Magadha, and a reference to a Satavahana ruler, provide the main anchors, and neither is unambiguous. Attempts to use the inscription to date the Mauryas or the Satavahanas therefore have to be handled with care.

Significance

Kharavela is the clearest early instance of a ruler identifying publicly with Jainism, and the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves are the principal material remains of Jainism in eastern India from the period. The inscription is also a rare first-person royal record from a dynasty otherwise almost unknown, which gives it a value beyond the religious history.