Abstract
The Sanskrit expression -pādānudhyāta, often met with in inscriptions, is commonly translated as ‘meditating on the feet of.’ Adducing copious evidence from inscriptions as well as from classical Sanskrit literature, this article argues that the traditional translation is wrong, at least in the case of inscriptions dated before the tenth century AD. From the available sources it appears that meditation on the feet—whether on a god’s or on a king’s—came to be common practice only from around the tenth century in India. Moreover, several parallels show that the original understanding of the phrase was ‘favoured / blessed by the respected,’ pāda being an honorific term here. In addition to this argument, the study also attempts to define the nature of the hierarchical relationship that the above expression probably implied and to show that the wrong understanding of the term was probably due to misconceptions about the divine nature of kingship in ancient India.
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The original idea of the article came from C. Ferrier, while most of the proofs and parallels have been researched by J. Törzsök, who wrote the paper. J. Törzsök is grateful to Somadeva Vasudeva and Marion Rastelli for generously sharing their etexts with her. C. Ferrier would like to thank the participants, especially Charlotte Schmid and Dominic Goodall, of the workshop entitled ‘Engraving the King’s Fame—Sanskrit Praśastis and Tamil Meykkīrttis’ held in Pondicherry, 6th–17th of August 2007, for their comments, suggestions and criticism concerning his analysis of the Allahabad inscription of Samudragupta. We are most grateful to Prof. H. Bakker and Prof. O. von Hinüber for their invaluable comments and criticism, and to Prof. O. von Hinüber for generously sharing with us his list of epigraphic occurrences of the term. Last but not least, we thank Chantal Duhuy for sparing her time and helping us well beyond her duty at the library of the Institut de Civilisation Indienne of the Collège de France.
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Ferrier, C., Törzsök, J. Meditating on the king’s feet? Some remarks on the expression pādānudhyāta . Indo-Iran J 51, 93–113 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10783-008-9101-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10783-008-9101-2