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No. 45] KONI INSCRIPTION OF KALACHURI PRITHVIDEVA II ; K. E. 900 277 brickbats. The protruding bricks had attracted the attention of some villagers who started digging there and laid bare the linga, the inscribed slab and a number of sculptures. Among the latter I saw two images, one of Vishnu and the other of Sürya, and a couple of lintels each with a figurine of Ganēsa in the centre and some carvings on either side."
The inscription is incised on a stone measuring 3' 5' broad and 1' 10" high. It consists of 28 lines, each of which is 3' 3-2" long except the last one which measures only 1.2" long. The record is in a good state of preservation except in the last three lines where a few aksharas here and there are now damaged. Most of these aksharas can, however, be restored conjecturally from the context as well as from the traces left behind.
The characters are Nāgari. The record is well written and engraved, but in both writing and engraving a few mistakes have reinained unnoticed. The average size of letters is .4". As shown below, the present inscription was incised only twenty years after the Sarkhổ plates were issued by Ratnadēva II in K. 880, but its charaeters in some cases show considerable development over those of the latter record. As regards individual letters, attention may be drawn to the form of the initial i consisting of two curves, one below the other, which are still unconnected; the upper one is as in the Sarkh8 plates, but the lower one is shaped differently, see iha, 1. 12 and idam-, 1. 24 ; initial e has a form similar to that of p with this difference that its vertical stroke on the right is not lengthened below the base, see états, 1. 23; medial u is, in some cases, indicated by a curve attached to the middle of the vertical and turned downwards, see sahasradyutir, l. 26; medial é and o are generally indicated by prishthamātrās, but in the case of ai and au one of the mātrās appears on the top ; in such aksharas as ku, kri and kra, k has an unlooped form, see akuntha-, 1.2; a-sakit-, 1. 2; and krida-, 1. 25; subscript g of the conjunct gg appears almost like n, see ggämbhiryam, 1. 16; # is still without its dot, see -ottunga-rangat-, 1. 2; the conjunct nn is indistinguishable from Il, see vinirnnaya., 1. 17; subscript this placed horizontally exactly like subscript chh, see kar-Odara-stham, 1.3; dh has developed a horn on the left which now clearly distinguishes it from u, but it is still without the horizontal stroke at the top and the two vertical strokes of dha are still joined by a bar in the middle, see dharmma-murttih, 1.6 and sudhā-srishtih, 1. 10; v and b are written alike in all cases not excepting even the form babhūva; the left limb of the palatal has now assumed the modern Nägari form, see Sivāya, 1. 1. Thé avagraha is used to denote the elision of a in karttan'tha, 1. 19 and manye-'mushmin-, 1.23. The vertical dash is used at the end of several lines to denote an incomplete word.
The language is Sanskrit. Except Oń namah Sivāya in the beginning and the mention of the date and the ruling king at the end, the record is metrically composed throughout. There are, in all, 38 verses, all of which are numbered. The record is composed in a verbose style full of hyperbolical expressions, well-known from the records of later periods. The poet shows considerable command over the language, though here and there one comes across a grammatical solecism or a metrical irregularity. See, e.g., adhiropyata in l. 21 for adhyarõpyata. Lakhamă in l. 15 should be Lakhmā to suit the Mālini metre of the verse. As regards orthography, the consonant follow. ing ris reduplicated in many cases, see, e.g., karnna-, 1.2; the dental 8 is occasionally used for the palatal & as in sikhara-, 1. 2; y is used for j in paurusha-yushän, 1. 15; n is used for ñ in panchayatanam, and for anusvāra in vidhvansa- both in I. 23. As stated before, v is used for b throughout. Finally, in nihkan taka, 11. 18 and 19, the visarga takes the place of sh.
The inscription refers itself to the reign of Prithvidēva II who belonged to the Ratanpur branch of the Kalachuri dynasty. The object of it is to record the construction of a five-shrined
Some mistakes were corrected subsequently, see, e.g., the anusvåra on the second nå in durjjanānam, 1.6, has been oan oolled and the word darhda which was at first omitted was incined subsequently in ll. 19-20.
Above, Vol. XXII, pp. 169 f. See especially the forms of i, di and S.
