________________
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[VOL. XXVIII
No. 18-NIMBAL INSCRIPTION OF YADAVA BHILLAMA
G. S. GAI, OOTACAMUND Nimbāl or Nimbāla (Bujrukh) is a village in the Indi taluk of the Bijapur District of the Bombay Province. It is situated at a distance of about 9 miles south-west of Indi, the headquarters of the täluk. Nimbal is a railway station on the metre gauge section of the M. & S. M. Railway between Gadag and Sholapur. The ancient name of this village is given as Nimbabura (from Nimbapura) in the present inscription and as Nimbaba Ha in another record at the same place. And the present name Nimbal has to be derived from Nimbahalla. The stone inscription published here is engraved on & slab built into the wall (inner side) which is to the proper left of entrance into the central shrine of the Sankaralinga temple in the village. This temple is evidently the same as the Köți-Sankaradēva temple mentioned in the inscription.
The inscription was first copied by the late Rao Bahadur (then Mr.) K. N. Dikshit and has been noticed in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, 1924-25, pp. 119-20." It was again copied by the office of the South Indian Epigraphy during the year 1937-38 in the course of the epigraphical survey of the Indi taluk and has been listed as B. K. No. 49 of 1937-38 of Appendix E to the Annual Report on South Indian Epigraphy for that year. It is from the ink-impressions of this collection that the inscription is edited here, for the first time, at the suggestion of the Superintendent for Epigraphy and with the kind permission of the Government Epigraphist for India.
At the top of the slab, on proper right and left sides, are the figures of the sun and the cresent moon and below these in the centre, is a standing cow with its calf. And behind the calf, to the proper left, is a dagger with the point turned upwards. Below these figures, at about a distance of 5", the inscription commences. There are twentyfive lines of writing and the inscription covers an area 21' high and 19' broad. Each line consists of about 21 aksharas and the average size of an akshara is f'. The inscription has been fairly well preserved.
The characters belong to the Kannada alphabet and are regular for the period to which the record belongs, viz., end of the 12th century A. D. The cursive form of v is found in kiduvudu line 2, -deva- line 6, vyatipāta line 7, sarva- line 12, -pürvvakan line 13 and Kannavüri- line 23 ; and the cursive form of m occurs in -mānikava line 16, mattaru lines 17-18, 19 and -namah line 23. Initial a is found in lines 3, 4, 7, 11, 17, 19 and 20. Visarga is met with in ramah line 23 and krimi line 25. The consonant after a répha is usually lengthened'; 6.g., chakravartti lines 5-6, súryya- line 7, dēvargge line 11, saruva- line 12, etc. Anusvāra has been used for class nasal in several plac88; see 9., pancha- line 2, anamta line 4, arnga- line 11, eto. The figures for the numerals 1, 2 and 50 occur in lines 18-23. Marks of punctuation represented by two vertical strokes are found in lines 5, 13, 16, 23 and 25.
Except the imprecatory verse at the end, the inscription is in Kannada language and is written in prose. The following linguistic features may be observed : The change of p>h which is met with in the history of the Kannada language as early as the 10th century A. D. is found in the word Nimbahura«Nimbapura, lines 1, 10, 15 and 17. The qualitative phonemio variation is met with
1 The adjoining village is called Nimbal (Khurd). * See also the same periodical for 1929-80, p. 172.
• Eight more stone records have been copied at the same place and are listed as B. K. Nos. 50-57 in the same Appendix.
. See above. Vol. XXVIL Pp. 146-47. . Svo G. 8. Gul, Historical Grammar of Old Kannada, p. 14. • Ibid., p. 4.
