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No. 20.)
TWO INSCRIPTIONS FROM SHERGADH.
137
B.--The Sömanātha Temple Inscription. This record is inscribed on a tablet, 16' x 13' in dimension, which is smoothly dressed. The original record was only in 15 lines, each line containing about 30 to 36 letters. At its end, however, there are scribbled two lines, of which the second is extensively damaged. This postscript was written in Samrat 1566 in the reign of Maharāja Sri-Jasasambhu, who seems to have been some local ruler.
The characters of the record are the Nāgari ones of the 11th century, to which it belongs. There is nothing particularly worth noting about them; attention, however, may be drawn to the way in which the medial i of bhù in bhūmi has been written in l. 8.
As regards the orthography, s is usually written for $; cf. Vaisakha for Vaišākha in 11. 1 and 3, stështhi for freshchi in l. 1, sālā for sālā in l. 6, samkhika for samkhika in l. 12. Sha, however, is not confounded with sa; cf. Gocsisha in l. 1, karsha in l. 2 and vpishabha in l. 4. The second letter of the conjunct, of which is the first member, is sometimes doubled and sometimes not; cf. pūrovataḥ in l. 13 and märggādāya in 11. 3 and 4, but chandrārka in 1l. 2, 4, 6 and 7, Kapardaka in l. 6 and maryādā in l. 14.
The Language of the record is Sanskrit, but showing many mistakes and some admixture of Prakrit. Wrong case-endings, or rather, no case-endings, are to be seen in the case of datta vrishabha for dattā vpishabhāh in l. 4, ghāna for ghānau in l. 5, svakiyā for svakiyau in l. 1). The sandhi rules are often neglected, cf. "dityaih bhattāraka for 'dityair-bhattāraka in l. 2.
This inscription is a public register of several donations given mainly to the same temple of Sõmanātha, which is the donee of the Inscription A above. In this respect it resembles the first part of the Siyadoņi inscription, inscribed about half a century earlier. Shergadh is only about 125 miles to the west of Siroņ Khurd, where the Siyadoņi inscription was discovered.
The donors in this record are all private individuals, mostly merchants or landlords. In the Siyadoni inscription the record of each donation is separated from that of the succeeding one by the interposing of & peculiar punctuation symbol; this bas been done only once in the present record, at the end of the second donation in l. 4. The dates of the donations have been given only in the first three cases. The latest of these, that of the donation No. 3, is Māgha Suddha 13 of Samvat 1084. The dates of the subsequent donations mentioned in the last section of the record have not been given. These, however, seem to have been made on the same day. And since the oilman Thãiyāka, mentioned in the donation of Samvat 1084, figures here also as one of the donors, the record as a whole can hardly be much later than Samvat 1100.
All the donations but one are in favour of Sõmanātha temple. The exception is the first donation which was given on the third day of the bright half of Vaišākha of Samvat 1074. As the week day is not given, this date cannot be verified, but it probably corresponds to the 2nd of April A. D. 2017. The donation was jointly given by three merchants named Narasimha, Gövsisha and Thīrāditya to Bhattáraka Nagnaka and consisted of the daily gift of a karsha, i.e., about three-fourths of a tola of ghee, for the purpose of the smearing of his feet. The record states that this quantity of ghee was to be given from out of the Mandapikā tax. Mandapika is a word unknown to Sanskrit köshas, but it seems to be the original term from which the Marathi word mandai and the Hindustani one mandi, both meaning market, have been derived. The three merchants mentioned above seem to have constituted the Town Committee in cbarge of the collection of the market taxes, which were usually collected in kind. The donation given by them was a trifling one, and they may have possessed discretionary powers to make it. Bhattā.
