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No. 18.]
MALLAR PLATES OF MAHA-SIVAGUPTA.
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conjectured that the stone slab containing the inscription of Bhavadēva Ranakēsarin must have been the one removed by Mr. Wilkinson from Bhāndak on the following grounds : (1) It is a long slab just as described to him by the people of Bhandak and it is of the very same fine-grained reddish stone as that of the Wijāsan hill at Bhāndak ; (2) Dr. Stevenson, who has translated it, received a copy of it from Major Wilkinson who was a resident at the Nagpur Court and (3) the inscription records that it was attached to the house of Sugata (Buddha) and therefore it probably belonged to Bhāndak which has ancient Buddhist caves. Cunningham's opinion was subsequently endorsed by R. B. Hiralalt and we find the stone inscription now relegated to Bhandak. None of the arguments, however, on which Cunningham's opinion was based appear to be convincing. Inscribed slabs of fine-grained reddish sandstone have been found in Chhattisgarh also. The Ratanpur stone inscription of Jajalladēva I. and the Kosgain stone inscription of Väharēndra, which are now deposited in the Nagpur Museum, are incised on such slabs. As for the statement that such a slab was taken away from Bhindak we may point out that it may relate to another inscription, viz., 'the Nagpur Museum prasasti of the rulers of Malwa,' as has already been conjectured in the second edition of the Central Provinces Gazetteers (published in 1870). This latter inscription was translated in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1843 and this date, curious as it might appear, roughly corresponds to the time when according to the account of both the writer in the Gazetteer and Cunningham an inscription was removed from Bhāndak to Nāgpur. There are, again, some ancient ruins of Buddhist temples and sculptures at Arang and Sirpur in Chhattisgarh, and our present inscription, which records the donation of a village to a Buddhist monastery, shows that Buddhism continued to flourish in Chhattisgarh for at least three generations after Bhavadēva Raņakēsarin. What is more, if we except this doubtful case of the so-called Bhāndak inscription, we find no other instance of an inscription of the Sõmavam i dynasty discovered in ancient Vidarbha in which, as shown elsewhere, the whole country from the western boundary of modern Berār to the eastern one of the Marathi district of Bhandārā in C. P. was included. This country was in the beginning of the sixth century under the direct rule of the Vákatakas. Harishēņa, the last known Vākāțaka king, mentions the king of Kõsala among his feudatories. If the period A. D. 530-550 assigned
1 Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXVII, p. 208, note 20 ; Vol. LXII, p. 163 ; Hiralal's List, p. 13. * See Bhandarkar's List, No. 1650. . Above, Vol. I, pp. 32 ff. • Hiralal's Liat, No. 210.
5. The date of its (i.c., of the Nagpur Museum prasasti) translation coincides curiously with the time at which an inscription was removed by the Nagpur Raja from the famous Snake temple at Bhandak in the Chanda District.' c. P. Gazetteer (Second Edition) Introduction p. liv. Rai Bahadur Hiralal conjecturally relegated this prasasti to Bilbări in the Jubbulpur District, because the name of the village Mökhalapätaka granted by it sounds like Dhangatapataka, Khailapataka, etc., mentioned in the Bilhári stone inscription (see his List f. n. on p. 1). But no such name can be found in the list of villages in the Jubbulpore District, while we have been able to trace one closely resembling it in the Chåndā District (viz., Mökhara, 50 miles east of Bhandak). Vyapura, the name of the mandala, in which it was included, may be represented by Wurgaon near Vairagarh, 30 miles north-east of Mökhara. These identifications would show that the prasasti originally came from the Chandă District. For a Paramara record of a slightly earlier date, found still further to the south, see the Jainad inscription describing the victories of Jagaddēva, a son of Udayāditya. (Annual Report of the Hyderabad Archæological Survey 1927-1928, pp. 23-24 and above, Vol. XXII, pp. 64-63.)
• See Hiralal's List, No. 184.
1 Above, Vol. XXII, pp. 169 and 211. It may be noted in this connection that the Gantáa-Purana (kridakhanda, adhyāya 26, #l. 2) mentions the town Adisha (modern Adass near Saoner in the Nagpur District) as situated in Vidarbha. This clearly shows that the Wardha was not the eastern boundary of ancient Vidarbha as it is of modern Berar.
* A. S. W. I., Vol. IV, pp. 124 ff.
