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Jinamanjari, volume 17, No. 1, April 1998
JAGDCHERLA JAIN INSCRIPTION FROM ANDHRA PRADESH
Dr. G. Jawaharlal, Director of Museums, Nellore, Andhra.
This inscription has been unearthed recently when the villagers constructed the culvert of a tank which lies in between Jagdcherla and Badepalli in Mahbubnagar district. It is now preserved in the premises of the Panchayat Samiti office of Jagḍcherla. It is a Jaina inscription - Jinaśāsanaṁ. The record comprises of 42 lines, and the state of writing has preserved good throughout.
The emblems at the top of the stone are: a Jain figure in crossleg squatting, two attendants on either side with chowries in their hands. Over the head, there is a trilinear umbrella with sun on to its and on the proper left of the Jain figure, there a cow with the moon above it. Thus, the record exhibits some of the Jain pratihāryas,' if not all.
1
The characters of the record are of the old Kannada script commonly found in the inscriptions of Twelfth century. They are round in shape and well executed. They own no peculiar features deserving special attention. The use of spirals instead of stroke for making their punctuation may be noted in some places. The orthographic traditions of the age, such as the doubling of the consonant in a conjunct after '>' are generally maintained. A noteworthy feature of phonetic transformation wherein the consonant 'r' is changed to "?' may be traced in a few instances. They are sarnngaldir in line 13 and enisinegldi in line 14. The language is Kannada, prose and verse. One benedictory verse in the beginning and another imprecatory verse at the end are in Sanskrit.
The benedictory verse is in praise of the doctrine of Lord Jina, overlord of the three worlds - trailōkyanātha, and which bears the glorious and supremely profound syādvāda as its infallible
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