English: This incomplete life size statue was found by a team led by John Marshall and Daya Ram Sahni in the large archaeological site, now known as Saheth-Maheth in northeastern part of Uttar Pradesh (also called Sravasti, Shravasti). It is about 175 kilometers northeast from Lucknow, the state capital.

The photograph and ink-print of the inscription was first published in 1909 by Daya Ram Sahni. He also published his translation of the first three lines (Archaeological Survey of India Annual Reports, 1908–09, pp. 133–137).

This Bodhisattva statue is significant for several reasons:

• It is one of the few that have inscriptions from two different centuries, in two different scripts, but both Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit (on EHS, see Richard Salomon, Indian Epigraphy, Oxford University Press, p. 81).
• Lines 1 to 3 are in Brahmi script from the 1st-century CE.
• Line 4 is in a Nagari variant, either 8th or 9th-century, likely latter.
• All four lines are neither Prakrit nor Sanskrit, but a hybrid. Some are accurate Sanskrit words, others grammatically incorrect Sanskrit with Prakrit influence.
• According to the Sahni translation of 1909, the first three lines state that This Bodhisattva was installed in Jetavana of Sravasti by "..." [missing] and Sivadhara, Kshatriya brothers from Vilishta and sons of Dharmananda from Mathura. This charitable gift is for the welfare of all living beings with special regard to their parents, to help accumulate merit for this world and merit for the next. The Bodhisattva was made by Sivamitra, a sculptor of Mathura.
• The 4th-line of the inscription at the bottom of the statue confirms that this statue was intact till about the 9th-century, and the Buddhism was thriving in Sravasti at that time. Several inscriptions with land grants and donations by Hindu kings to Sravasti in 9th- to 11th-century corroborate that several large Buddhist monasteries were active in Sravasti in those centuries.
• Self identification of the donors as Kshatriyas suggests that this caste identification was in vogue by the 1st century CE. The names mentioned in this inscription are all Hindu names of Shaivism tradition, suggesting that Buddhism was not seen as a rival religion by Hindus of this region in the 1st-century. This is also true for Jain artwork found in Mathura of this period, where donors to Jain temples and artworks have either Jain or Hindu names, states Sahni.
• The practice of sculptors identifying themselves by their names on major statues had begun by the 1st century CE in India. Mathura was a major artworks center and supplier of religious statues in ancient greater India, since Saheth-Maheth where this large lifesize statue portion was excavated is about 600 kilometers from Mathura.
• This archaeological discovery was one of the key pieces of evidences that helped establish that Saheth-Maheth was the ancient and revered Sravasti pilgrimage place of Buddhism.

This artwork is partly based on the photographs published in 2D form in 1909 (See Archaeological Survey of India Annual Report 1908–1909, details above). Thus wikimedia commons PD-Art guidelines apply. Any rights I have as a photographer and creative artist, I herewith donate to the public domain through wikimedia commons (the free CC0 license).