492 PAINTING OF BUDDHIST LEGEND CH. XLIV
side. According to his repeatedly checked reading, the text has to be interpreted : " This fresco is [the work] of Tita who has received 3000 Bhammakas [for it]." The only elements of doubt in connection with this rendering arise from a crack of the plaster which passes through the first two syllabic signs of the word ` Bhammaka,' and from the absence of textual confirmation for the meaning ` piece of money,' recorded by Indian lexicographers for the Sanskrit term bharma, of which it appears to be the correct phonetic derivative.
But leaving aside the question as to this possible mention of the painter's wages, there remains quite enough to justify the reference I have made here to this curious little inscription and the Abbé Boyer's rendering ; for if we are right in accepting the latter I should feel no hesitation about recognizing in ' Tita,' the painter's name, the familiar Western name of Titus. Tita is a noun form which, as an indigenous growth, we could not etymologically or phonetically account for in any early Indian or Iranian language. On the other hand, the analogy of a considerable number of Greek and other foreign names borrowed by ancient India from the West, proves that Tita is the very form which the name Titus would necessarily assume in Sanskrit and Prakrit.
We have abundant evidence for the fact that Titus as a personal name was, during the early centuries of our era, in popular use throughout the Roman Orient, including Syria and the other border provinces towards Persia. Recent archaeological discoveries in India have also accustomed us to the knowledge that men with good classical names, like Agesilaos and Heliodorus, found employment as artists and royal servants, not on the Indus alone, but far away in the Indian peninsula, down to the times of Indo-Scythian rule from the first to the third century A.D. That the date of the Miran temples cannot be far removed from the end of this period we have seen already. Of the strength and directness of the influence then exercised by classical art in this remote corner of Central Asia the frescoed walls of the temples give eloquent testimony.
IIIF Color HighRes
