The term kuśaṇa-mūla, occurring twice in Nasik inscription 12, has been the subject of a long controversy. In 1978 V.V. Mirashi first correctly proposed a connection with the familiar Buddhist term kuśala-mūla ('root of merit'), but he thought that the form kuśaṇa- was a 'mistake' for kuśala-. Here it is argued that the variant form is not a mistake, but rather a dialectal variant reflecting the alternation between n/ṇ and l that is widely attested in Indo-Aryan languages, especially in cases of dissimilation of proximate syllables with l.
