amridaha/amridae 銘像は果して阿弥陀仏を表すに非ざるか-ガンダーラ彫刻の一碑銘の解釈をめぐって-

抄録

In 1982 the late Prof. Brough published a very interesting article concerning a Gandharan inscription. According to him, the inscription contains two words “amridaha” and “oloispare,” which he took to express the well-known names of the Mahayana Buddha Amitabha and Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. Exactly twenty years later, Profs. Salomon and Schopen published under their joint authorship another article dealing with the inscription. In it they rejected Brough's interpretation. Their argument is persuasive; thus it seems that in general their conclusions are admissible, except for one point of interpreting the ‘difficult,’ according to their wording, word “oloispare.” Regarding this word, they proposed a different interpretation from that of Brough, taking it as indicating a toponym of an ‘unknown’ place. But it is problematic (at least to the present author). The present author wants to give the word another interpretation than the above-mentioned two, taking it to denote an ‘epithet’ of the Central Buddha of the Triad. His overall conclusion to the inscription is that it does refer, though not directly, to Amida-buddha―according to his opinion, neither Amitabha nor Amitayus but Amrda (<Am-drta)―himself.