________________
No. 45.)
KAMAN STONE INSCRIPTION.
390
No. 46.-KAMAN STONE INSCRIPTION.
BY PROF. V. V. MIRASHI, M.A., NAGPUR. Kaman, the headquarters of a tahsil of the same name in the State of Bharatpur in Rājputäna, is situated in 27° 39' N. and 77° 16' E. about 35 miles North by West from Bharatpur and about 40 miles from Mathurā. There are several derivations given of the place-name. According to one account the old name of tbe place was Kadambavana from the numerous Kadamba trees found there ; another account traces the present nanie to a mythical Rājā Kāmasēna', while according to Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji it is derived from Kāmavana?. In the middle of the town there is an old fort which contains a mosque called Chaurasi Khambā built with materials from Hindu temples. A Sanskrit inscription on one of the pillars built into the inner side of the court-wall of this mosque has been edited by Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji in the Indian Antiquary. Vol. X, pp. 34 tf. The inscription is undated, but according to the Pandit it can be referred to about the eighth century A.D. It records the building of a temple of Vishnu by a prince of the Sürasēna dynasty.
The present inscription, which is edited here for the first time, was brought to my notice by Mr. V. S. Agrawala, M.A., Curator of the Curzon Museum of Archæology, Muttra, who kindly furnished me with two excellent estampages and a photograph of it. The stone which bears this record is said to have been obtained from a large well situated about half a mile outside Kāman. It is now at Gokul in the possession of Sri Vallabha Lalji Maharaj Gosai who very kindly allowed Mr. Agrawala to copy it. Kāman is one of the twelve holy places of the Vraja Mandal and is also one of the headquarters of Sri Vallabha Lalji Maharaj. The same stone contains another record in Persian embossed letters on the reverse side. I feel deeply grateful to the Gosai Maharaj for permission to edit the present record.
The writing covers a space 2' 2" broad by 1' 81" high. There are twenty-four lines in all, of which the last is only one-third of the rest. The inscription has been very badly mutilated especially in lines 1-12 where only about a dozen aksharas at either end are now legible. Even in the lower half of the record where the writing is better preserved, a few aksharas here and there have been completely damaged, while some others can be read only with patience and perseverance from the faint traces which can still be marked on the back of the impressions. The characters belong to the North Indian alphabet of about the 9th century A.D. They are very beautifully written and skilfully incised, the strokes for medial vowels being ornamentally treated as in the Jhālrāpātan inscriptions. Especially noteworthy are the signs for the medial a, i and i and the diphthongs. These appear in many
* Imperial Gazetteer of India, Rajputana, pp. 338-39. * Ind. Ant., Vol. X, p. 34.
[This record was copied by me in January, 1937, and has been noticed in the An. Rep., A. S.I., for 193637. The stone, I was told by the Gosai Maharaj himself, came out of the well which was re-excavated at his instance. A number of broken Hindu images also came out of it some of which were seen placed near the well when I visited Kā man. The inscription seems to have been deliberately damaged, probably by the Muslim invaders. Mr. G. Yazdani has kindly sent me the following translation of the Persian record which is incised on the other side of the stone:
"The well was originally excavated some 50 years ago; but was filled up with stone and earth during the governorship of Muhammad Haji. As the scarcity of water was causing trouble to people the well was re-excavated in the month of Ramzān 669 H. (A.D. 1271) during the reign of Ghiyāthud-d-Din Balban, and the government of Nusrat Khan, the fief-holder of Bayāna."
This record is under publication in the Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica.-Ed.] • In. Ant., Vol. V, pp. 180 ff.
