From a somewhat later period, as the characters show, from the first century B.C. comes a dedicatory inscription which has been found far to the west of the original home of the Jainas, in Mathura on the Jamna.  It tells of the erection of a small temple in honour of the Arhat Vardhamana, also of the dedication of seats for the teachers, a cistern, and a stone table.  The little temple, it says, stood beside the temple of the guild of tradesmen, and this remark proves, that Mathura, which, according to the tradition of the Jainas, was one of the chief scats of their religion, possessed a community of Jainas even before the time of this inscription. [Footnote:  This inscription also was first made known by Dr Bhagwanlal Indiaji, loc. cit. p. 143.]

A large member of dedicatory inscriptions have come to light, which are dated from the year 5 to 98 of the era of the Indo-Skythian kings, Kanishka, Huvishka, and Vasudeva (Bazodeo) and therefore belong at latest to the end of the first and to the second century A.D.  They are all on the pedestals of statues, which are recognisable partly by the special mention of the names of Vardhamana and the Arhat Mahavira, partly by absolute nudity and other marks.  They show, that the Jaina community continued to flourish in Mathura and give besides extraordinarily important information, as I found in a renewed research into the ancient history of the sect.  In a number of them, the dedicators of the statues give not only their own names, but also those of the religious teachers to whose communities they belonged.  Further, they give these teachers their official titles, still used among the Jainas:  vachaka, ‘teacher’, and ga[n.]in, ‘head of a school’.  Lastly they specify the names of the schools to which the teachers belonged, and those of their subdivisions.  The schools are called, ga[n.]a, ‘companies’; the subdivisions, kula, ‘families’ and [’s]akha, ‘branches’.  Exactly the same division into ga[n.]a, [’s]akha, and kula is found in a list in one of the canonical works, of the [’S]vetambaras, the Kalpasutra, which gives the number of the patriarchs and of the schools founded by them, and it is of the highest importance, that, in spite of mutilation and faulty reproduction of the inscriptions, nine of the names, which appear in the Kalpasutra are recognisable in them, of which part agree exactly, part, through the fault of the stone-mason or wrong reading by the copyist, are somewhat defaced.  According to the Kalpasutra, Sushita, the ninth successor to Vardhamana In the position of patriarch, together with his companion Supratibuddha, founded the ‘Ko[d.]iya’ or ’Kautika ga[n.]a, which split up into four ’sakha, and four ‘kula’.  Inscription No. 4. which is dated in the year 9 of the king Kanishka or 87.  A.D. (?) gives us a somewhat ancient form of the name of the ga[n.]a Ko[t.]iya and that of one of its branches exactly corresponding