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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
preserved in a fragment which I found in 1874 in the Brihajjñánakosha at Jesalmir. A colophon on fol. 1490 runs as follows: XT HYTTEUTETUT T e afarferret
C u ret utanfaat met HATAT | The work is partly in prose and partly in verse.
Regarding the extensive building operations which Bhoja undertook according to verse 20, I am not able to bring forward any corroboration from other sources. But it is very probable that a prince, so fond of display as he was, adorned his capital and perhaps even foreign sacred places with architectural monuments.
The hints regarding Bhoja's end in verse 20 of the Udepur Prasasti agree very closely with those given in the Nagpur Prasasti, and are perfectly reconcilable with Merutunga's story according to which he succumbed to a combined attack of Karna of Chedi and of Bhima I. of Gujarat, or died, just when this attack took place. Both these kings, no doubt, were his contemporaries and his neighbours in the east and in the west. Nevertheless an implicit acceptance of the story has its difficulties. For the Chedi inscriptions do not even hint that Karna worked the destruction of the most famous monarch of the eleventh century. Nor does Hemachandra, who wrote his Doydsraya Kdvya about 150 years before Merutunga's times, say that Bhima I. had a share in Bhoja's reverses, though otherwise he is anxious to place Bhima's military exploits in the best possible light. It seems strange that the Chedian court-poets and older Gujarati writers should both have forgotten to notice an event which must have reflected so much glory on the ancestors of their patrons. Owing to these considerations I cannot at present give as unqualified an assent to Merutunga's story as I have done on a former occasion. Neither the date of Bhoja's accession to the throne, nor that of his defeat and death, can, I fear, be accurately ascertained. All that can be said regarding the former event is that it must have happened between the date of the composition of Padmagupta's Navasáhasankacharita about A. D. 1005, and that of Bhoja's war with Jayasimha III. of Kalyani, which latter occurred, as has been shown, between A. D. 1011-12 and 1018-19. It seems probable, however, that it lay closer to the lower than to the remoter of these two limits. For Padmagupta does not mention Bhoja in his poem. This is a certain sign that Bhoja was not grown up at the time when he wrote. For, if that had been the case, Padmagupta would have felt it his duty to put in a compliment for the heir-apparent, as the court-poets invariably do in similar cases. Bhoja may then have been a boy of ten or twelve or even fourteen years, but he cannot have reached as yet the Indian age of majority, his sixteenth year. If I am right in placing the composition of the Navaadhasánkacharita about the year 1005 A.D., the time when Bhoja can have assumed the reins of government must fall about A. D. 1010, or even somewhat later. Further, certain dates during his reign are furnished by his land-grant of Vikrama Samvat 1078 or A. D. 1021-22. by the statement of Berunt, that Bhojadeva ruled over Dhard and Malva when he wrote his Indioa, in A. D. 1080, and by the date in the Rdjamrigankakarana, Saka Samvat
I ordered a copy to be made, which, however, has never been sont. • Prabandhachintamani, pp. 117 ff.; K. Forbes, RAMAIA, p. 88 f. # Sir A. Canningham's Arch. Suro. Rep. vol. IX, p. 107. • Vibramdabadovacharita, p. 38.
Bee Professor Saobau's Translation of Al-Berunt's Indica, vol. I, p. 191.
