Person · Jain king of Kalinga
Kharavela
Also known as Khāravela, Aira Kharavela, Kalingadhipati Kharavela
Kharavela was a Jain king of Kalinga of the Mahameghavahana line, known almost entirely from his own seventeen-line Prakrit inscription in the Hathigumpha cave on Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar. It records his reign year by year: canals, festivals and tax remissions beside raids on Rajagriha, the Satavahana country and a Tamil confederacy. Unusually, the king boasts of his education in writing, coinage, accounts and law, and he names Bharatavasa as a land to campaign against.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Mahameghavahana
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested — Rests on one damaged inscription whose readings and date are disputed.
Worth knowing
In his twelfth year he claims to have brought home from Magadha 'the Jina of Kalinga' that a Nanda king had carried off, which many scholars read as an early record of a Jain image.
His date is unsettled: readings of the Hathigumpha text have placed him anywhere from the early 2nd century BCE to the early 1st century CE, and Sircar and Spink favour the 1st century BCE. Only four of the seventeen lines are fully legible, so many claims, such as a Rajasuya and the expulsion of Ajivikas, are disputed readings.
Connections (5)
- Imperial inscription atUdayagiri & Khandagiri caves
Kharavela's seventeen-line Prakrit inscription in Brahmi is cut partly on the front and partly on the ceiling of the Hathigumpha, the 'elephant cave', on the south face of Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar. It opens with a salutation to the Arhats and Siddhas close to the Jain Namokar mantra, and for his thirteenth year records gifts of silk and white cloth to Jain monks on the Kumari hill. It was unknown to scholars until A. Sterling published it in 1825.
- CampaignRajagriha / Rajgir
In his eighth regnal year Kharavela marched north, demolished the hill fort of Gorathagiri that guarded Rajagriha and laid siege to the city. The inscription says the news so frightened a Yavana king, read as Dimita and often identified with an Indo-Greek ruler, that he retreated to Mathura. Four years later Kharavela returned, made the king of Magadha bow at his feet and carried off the riches of Anga and Magadha. The readings of these damaged lines are disputed.
- CampaignBarabar caves
The fortress of Gorathagiri that Kharavela stormed on his march to Rajagriha stood in the Barabar hills of Gaya district, whose polished caves had earlier been given to the Ajivika ascetics. Ananta Prasad Banerji-Sastri read the Hathigumpha text as saying that Kharavela, a Jain, expelled the Ajivikas, rivals of the Jains, from the Barabar caves and defaced their inscriptions. The reading is one scholar's interpretation of a badly damaged passage and is not generally accepted as settled.
- Associated withBharata / Bharatavarsha
Line ten of the Hathigumpha inscription says that in his tenth year Kharavela, following the threefold policy of chastisement, alliance and conciliation, sent an expedition against Bharatavasa and took jewels from the kings he attacked. It is among the earliest inscriptional uses of the name, and here it seems to denote a land beyond Kalinga to be campaigned against rather than a shared homeland. D. C. Sircar doubted that this part of the stone has been read accurately.
- AnalogueAshoka
Ashoka's invasion of Kalinga around 262–261 BCE brought it under Maurya rule; the Hathigumpha inscription implies that Kalinga had regained its independence after Ashoka's death and that Kharavela was born in a free Kalinga. Like Ashoka, Kharavela claims to honour every sect and to have repaired the temples of all gods. Paul Dundas reads such claims in both kings as ways of presenting a universal ruler, though one patronised the Buddhist sangha and the other Jain monks.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Kharavela" and "Hathigumpha inscription". B. Barua, Old Brahmi Inscriptions in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves (1929); Upinder Singh, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India (2016).
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