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No. 26]
THREE INSCRIPTIONS FROM VALGUDAR
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vāhana is usually found to be the lion. A similar image now lodged in the compound of a temple on the bank of the tank called Samsarpokhri at Luckce arai has a snake canopy above the deity's head. The deity seems to have been the primitive Mother-goddess worshipped under different local names in various parts of East India, though she may have been associated with the Buddhist deity Häriti as well as the Brahmanical goddess Pärvati with Skanda on her lap. An image of a four-armed goddess, holding in the upper hands a fish and a pot and by the lower ones a child, was found in the village of Paikpara in the Dacca District (East Bengal) and is now preserved in the Dacca Museum. N. K. Bhattasali' identifies the deity tentatively with the Buddhist goddess Háriti, although it is pointed out that Hariti's representation have usually two arms only. This image has, however, neither he usual lion pedestal nor the occasional snake canopy. Images of the Dēvi, with two or four arms and a snake canopy but with or without a child on her lap, found in Bengal, have been identified with the Snake goddess called Manasa. The name of Manasā (supposed to be derived from that of he South Indian Mañchamma) is, however, not found in the literature of a date earlier than the latter part of the inedieval period, and an image of the same deity, with the snake canopy but without the child, found at Marail in the Dinajpur District, is known from the inscription (in characters of the tenth or eleventh century) it bears to have been called Bhallini Mattuva.' Images of Manasi are usually without the child; but out of the four late dhyānas of this goddess, quoted by Bhattasali, at least the one quoted from Kasirāma Váchaspati's commentary on Raghunandana's Tithyāditattva represents the goddess as Astika-mātā and sisu-sutā, the latter pointing to her representation with a child on her lap. It seems that the same primitive mother-goddess with a child on her lap, sometimes represented with a lion pedestal and sometimes with a snake canopy, was worshipped under different names in different parts of East India, the snake-canopied form being later endowed with the name Manasă in Bengal. The Jain Ambikā seems to be an adaptation of the same diety. The inscription on the Valgüdar image of the Dēvi with a child on her lap is written in two lines, covering a space about 4.2" in length and l' in height. The aksharas are about 4" in height. The third inscription discovered by me at Valgudar was found on the pedestal (image now lost) lying near a well in the locality called Sangat Owing to its being the area under a Sikh religious establishment in the village. It is written in three lines covering an area about 7.4" in length and 1.2" in height. The letters are small in size and measure about 3" in height.
The characters employed in all the three inscriptions are the same as found in the records of the Palas of Bengal and Bihar, although the first and second epigraphs are considerably earlier than the third one. While Nos. 1 and 2 have to be ascribed on palaeographical grounds to the eighth or ninth century, No. 3 should be assigned to the twelfth century. All the three inscriptions are written in Sanskrit prose, though there are some mistakes and signs of Prakrit influence. As regards orthography, they closely resemble the epigraphic records of the Pālas and hardly anything in them calls for special mention. Inscriptions Nos. 1 and 2 are not dated, but the former
1 Iconography of Buddhist and Brahmanical Sculptures in the Dacca Museum, pp. 63 ff; Plate XXV. * History of Bengal, Dacca University, Vol. I, pp. 40-61 ; Plate LXVI, No. 159.
• Ibid., p. 460. The occurrence of Manasi-dēvi ay an illustration of the sútra, manaső nämni, for the a-lul samasa, in the old commentary of Dharmadása on the Chandra-Vyakarana (see 8. Sen, Bangala Sahityer Itihasa, Vol. 1, second edition, p. 109; cf. History of Bengal, op. cit., p. 297 and notes) is unjustifiable and is probably a late interpolation. Manasi is mentioned in such medieval works as the Brahmavaivarta Purana (14th-15th century; JRASB, Letters, Vol. XIV, p. 6, note 3) and the lexicons of Jaţadhara and Kēkava. For the sakegoddess Mane Mañchi or Mane Manchamma (cf. Telugu manichipamu, '& cobra') of Mysore, see H. Whitehead, The Village Gods of South India, pp. 82-83. The Sēnas of Karnata may have introducet this name of the goddess in Bengal. The name Pundēstari reminds us of the Pundras, an ancient non-Aryan people of Eastern
India.
• Op. cit., pp. 218, 219, 223, 227. • Hielory of Bengal, p. 465; Plate I.XIV, No. 153.
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