________________
140
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
(VOL. XXVIII
refers to the reign of the Päla king Daharmapāla whose rule is now assigned to circa 769-815 A.C. or 770-810 A. C. As suggested above, inscription No. 2 has to be ascribed on palaeographic grounds to the days of Dharmapala or to those of his immediate successors. Inscription No. 3 is dated in the Saka year 1083 (1161 A. C.) as well as in the 18th regnal year of Madanapala whose reign is assigned now to circa 1130-50 A. C.or 1140-55 A. C., although, as will be shown below, all previous suggestions about the date of this king are now proved to be wrong by the discovery of the present inscription.
Inscription No. 1, as it reads, seems to imply that a god named Madhuśrēņika was installed at the adhishthana or city of Krimilā during the reign of king Dharmapala by the lady Ajhuka who was the wedded wife of a person named Salo. If, however, the visarga in madhusrenikah is ignored, that expression may be taken as an adjective of the personal name Sālo, although in either case its real import remains doubtful. In case the second alternative is preferred, it has to be assumed that, as in numerous other cases, the name of the deity installed by Salo's wife is not mentioned in the record. That is, however, not an important matter. Nor has the reference to Dharmapāla's reign any special value to the students of history as the inclusion of the region, where the inscription has been found, in the dominions of the Påla king is definitely known from other records. The chief interest of the inscription lies in the mention of the city of Ksimilā where the image is said to have been installed. It is very interesting to note that the same city is also mentioned, under the spellings Krimila and Krimila, in inscriptions Nos. 2 and 3 to be discussed below. It is further mentioned in an inscription on a Dvadasāditya slab which was installed in the 5th regnal year of Śūrapāla (possibly the first ruler of this name who flourished about the middle of the ninth century) and is now lying at Räjaunâ, & village abutting on Valgüdar'. It is very probable that the slab had been originally discovered at Valgüdar but was later carried to Rājaunā. It is thus clear that the small village of Valgüdar in the western fringe of the Monghyr District of Bihar stands on the site of the city of Krimila famous in the days of the Palas. There is again no doubt that this city was the head quarters of the vishaya or district of the same name that formed
part of the Pála dominions. The Monghyr copper-plate of Dēvapāla, who was the son and successor of Dharmapäla and reigned in circa 815-54 A. C. or 810-50 A. C. according to recent writers on the Palas,' was issued by the Pāla king from Mudgagiri (modern Monghyr) and records the grant of a village situated in the Krimila vishaya forming a part of the Srinagara bhukti. The Lhukti or province called Srinagara (literally 'the illustrious city') was no doubt named after Pāțaliputra which was apparently the administrative headquarters of the province in question. That Pătaliputra, of which the modern representative is Pātnā (from Sanskrit pattana meaning & town, i.e., the town par excellence) was regarded as the city par excellence is known from the Jayamangala commentary on Vâtsyāyana's Kamasutra,' explaining words like nägarakāh, nügarikäh and någarikyah (i.e., men and women of the nagara) as pataliputrakāḥ, pätaliputrikūh and pāçaliputrikyah (i.e., men and women of Pāțaliputra). The Srinagara bhukti was often called Nagara-bhukti and possibly also Magadha-bhukti. The exact location of the Krimila
1 Ray, Dynastic History of Northern India, Vol. I, p. 384. • History of Bengal, Dacca University, Vol. I, p. 177. * Ray, op. cit., p. 386.
History of Bengal, loc. cit. . The name is derived from a Sanskrit word which is spelt both as krimi and krimi.
• Tho Rajauna Pundēsvarl image inscription of the time of Nayapăla, referred to above, also mentions Krimili as the place of installation and appears to have been originally found at Valgadar.
Cr. Ray, loc. cit.; History of Bengal, loc. cit. . VI, 6, 30; 9, 24.
Cf. Sastri, Nalanda and its Epigraphic Materials (Memoirs of the A. S. I., No. 66), pp. 33, 62, 63, 84. 10 Cf. ibid. pp. 33, 51, 52.
