__NOTOC__ The Mountain Temple inscription was found near

Mathura Mathura () is a city and the administrative headquarters of Mathura district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is located approximately north of Agra, and south-east of Delhi; about from the town of Vrindavan, and from Govardhan. ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. It is on a broken slab, and now housed at the

Indian Museum, Kolkata The Indian Museum in Central Kolkata, West Bengal, India, also referred to as the Imperial Museum at Calcutta in colonial-era texts, is the ninth oldest museum in the world, the oldest and largest museum in India as well as in Asia. It has rare ...

. Heinrich Lüders and Klaus Ludwig Janert (1961), Mathurā inscriptions, Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, , pages 203-204, 154, image on page 318 The Mountain Temple inscription makes an early mention of Hindu and Jain temple architecture, where its shape is described to be like a mountain and accompanied with an assembly hall ('' sabha''). The inscription's wording and arrangement, state Luders and Janert, closely resembles the Mora Well inscription, now in Mathura museum. Both describe a donation of a stone temple, halls and slabs; however, the Mora Well inscription is more detailed and mentions '' pratima''. The Rajula in line 3 of the Mountain Temple inscription is likely the

Northern Satraps The Northern Satraps (Brahmi: , ''Kṣatrapa'', "Satraps" or , ''Mahakṣatrapa'', "Great Satraps"), or sometimes Satraps of Mathura, or Northern Sakas, are a dynasty of Indo-Scythian rulers who held sway over the area of Eastern Punjab and Math ...

Great Satrap

Rajuvula Rajuvula (Greek alphabet, Greek ; Brahmi script, Brahmi: , ; Kharosthi: , ; , ; , ) was an Indo-Scythian Great Satrap (''Mahākṣatrapa''), one of the "Northern Satraps" who ruled in the area of Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, Mathura in the northe ...

, found in

Mathura lion capital The Mathura lion capital is an Indo-Scythian sandstone capital (a part of a pillar) from Mathura in Northern India, dated to the first decade of the 1st century CE (1–10 CE). It was consecrated under the rule of Rajuvula, one of the Norther ...

. The Mountain Temple inscription lacks a date. The similar

Mora Well Inscription The Mora Well inscription is an ancient Sanskrit inscription found in the village of Mora about from Mathura, India.Heinrich Lüders and Klaus Ludwig Janert (1961), Mathurā inscriptions, Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, , page 154, image o ...

is dated to the early decades of the 1st-century CE and is related to early

Vaishnavism Vaishnavism ( sa, वैष्णवसम्प्रदायः, Vaiṣṇavasampradāyaḥ) is one of the major Hindu denominations along with Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. It is also called Vishnuism since it considers Vishnu as the ...

: the Mora Well inscription mentions stone shrines dedicated to five

Vrishni heroes The Vrishni heroes (IAST: Vṛṣṇi Viras), also referred to as ''Pancha-viras'' (IAST: Pañca vīras, "Five heroes"), are a group of five legendary, deified heroes who are found in the literature and archaeological sites of ancient India. The ...

Inscription

The discovered inscription is incomplete, in not quite correct

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

. It reads:

1. . . . uvulasya putrasya mahaksatrapasya so ... 2. . . . ti parvato prasade(or do) sabha silapata ... 3. . . . taviryo rane rajulas ca pi a... 4. . . . sasyedam arca ...

Translation

Sonya Quintanilla translates it as,

References

{{Hindu inscriptions and arts, state=autocollapse Indian inscriptions Mathura