Epigraphia Indica Vol 02

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India

Page 25

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
the writing is well preserved and may be read with certainty throughout. The size of the letters is between 16 and 18". The characters are Nagari, carefully drawn and engraved ; and they include the sign of the jihvámiliya in mahipalah-Karnnah, in line 9, and that of the upadhmániya in Hinah-praharsham, in line 10. The language is Sanskrit, and excepting the introductory on om namah Sivaya and the date at the end, the inscription is in verse. The language is not quite free from mistakes. For, in line 10, we find the perfect form chakape, instead of chakampe (which would not have suited the metre), and, in line 25, the imperative dyadhattám, possibly an error of the writer or engraver, instead of vidhattam which would suit the metre equally well. Besides we have, in line 9, the wrong abstract noun chandimata, and, in line 2, the adjective valgu, used in the sense of the participle valgat. And the rules of sandhi have not been observed in kim=vá, line 2, and in yushmán=fariraiḥ, line 3. As regards orthography, the consonant bis seven times denoted by its own proper sign, but just as often by the sign for o. Thus, in lines 7 and 10 we read bibhrat, but in line 6 ribhrat; in line 16 buddher, but in line 1 ouddhim, &c. The sibilants are generally employed each in its proper place; but in line 14 we have saţála, instead of sațála as the word is correctly written in line 27. Instead of the sign of anusvára the dental n has been wrongly employed in the word sinha (in the proper names Vairisinka, Vijayasinha, &c., in lines 16, 17, 21-23, and 29), in banka, line 20, and in sudhansuh, line 18 (properly written sudhamsu in line 4); and even at the end of a word before an initial sibilant, in sansatsu, line 6, and etán=súrih, line 28. And, generally, it may be noted that out of about 60 cases where the use of the anusvára would have been optional, at the end of a word before a following initial consonant, and where it would now be usually employed throughout, it has been actually employed only about 25 times, while in the rest of the cases the nasal of the class to which the following consonant belongs has been used instead; and that the sign of anusvára never occurs, instead of the sign for m, at the end of a verse or half-verse.
The inscription was composed by Sasidhara, a younger son of Dharanidhara and grandson of Mahesvara, of the Mauna gotra ; written on the stone by his elder brother Prithvid hara; and engraved by Mahid hara, a son of the artizan Balasimha (verses 32-35 and 37). And its object is, to record that the queen Alhaņadevi, the wife (or rather, widow) of the king Gaya karnadeva, and mother of the reigning king Narasim hadeva and his younger brother Jayasiṁhadeva, founded a Siva temple, with a matha or cloister, a hall of study, and gardens attached to it; that, probably for the maintenance of these buildings and their occupants, she assigned the income from the two villages of Namaüņdi, in the Jå uli pattala, and of Makara påţaka, on the right bank of the Narmada in the land adjoining the hills, and that the management of the whole establishment, thus founded by the queen, was entrusted in the first instance to a Påbupata ascetic, named Rudrarasi, of Lata lineage (vv. 27-31). The inscription also records (in verse 36) that all the buildings, etc., aforesaid, at one of which the inscription may be supposed to have been put up, were designed or executed by the architect Pithe.
The second half of verse 20 grossly offends against a well-known metrical rule.
Similar mistakes are found in other Chedi inscriptions of the same period.
• Dharapidhara, Prithvid bara and Mahidbars are mentioned also in the Tewar stone inscription of Gayákarnadera, of the Chedi year 902. Compare Indian Antiquary, vol. XVIII, p. 210, note 2