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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[VOL. XXVIII
· B. Chamundā Image Inscription of Vatsadēvi Jajpur, a famous centre of Tantrik worship and the Mother-goddess cult, abounds in the images of the Mātrikäs. There is a small temple where the Mātrikäs are in actual worship. A number of huge Mātrikā images are preserved in shades within the compound of the S. D. O.'s Bungalow. Of the Māțrikās, Chāmundā appears to have been in special favour at Jajpur and her images are very often met with scattered here and there. One such image of the goddess Chāmundā was found by me on the main road in the neighbourhood of the Trilochana temple. The image is not under regular worship, although its mutilated face, dabbed with vermilion, shows that it commands at least some respect from the womenfolk of the locality. Most of the images examined by me at Jajpur were found to be uninscribed ; but the image of Chamundi noticed above has one line of writing on its base. The inscription covers a space of 14 feet in length. A single letter is about 1.5" in height; but a conjunct and a consonant with vowel marks are in some cases about 4' high.
The characters belong to the Northern class of alphabet of about the seventh century A. D. The ornamental vowel mark in rã reminds us of epigraphs like the Banskhera plate of Harshavardhana dated Harsba] Samvat 22 (=628 A. D.)' and the Udaypur inscription of Aparajita dated V. S. 718 (=661 A. D.).. Medial i is still short ; but medial i is long enough to reach the bottom line of the letters. Subscript y has its lower part lengthened towards the left; but it is shorter than in the case of the record of the Bhauma-Kara dynasty edited above (A). Although some of the palaeographical features of that inscription are present in the epigraph under discussion, this record seems to belong to an earlier date. The forms of s and d are slightly earlier. The language of the inscription is Sanskrit, although there is Prakrit influence in the form oděvyāyāḥ for devyāḥ. As regards orthography the reduplication of t in conjuction with the preceding may be noticed.
The inscription simply refers to the kirtli of queen Vatsadēvi. The kirtti (literally meaning 'fame') referred to is undoubtedly the image of the goddess Chamundā on which the epigraph is incised. Bhagawanlal Indraji and K. T. Telang pointed out that in certain connections the word kirttana means a temple. R. G. Bhandarkar supported the suggestion by quoting passages from the Agni Purāna, Bana's Kādambari and Sõmēsvara's Kirtti-kaumudi. J. F. Fleet referred to the Mandar rock inscriptions of the time of Adityasēna mentioning one's pushkarini-kirtti which he rendered as the "famous work of a tank" and pointed out that the same meaning may be applied in many other cases to the word kirtti." But he further suggested on the authority of R. G. Bhandarkar that "kirtti and kirtana are hardly to be actually translated by the word temple' or by any other specific term, but denote generally any work of public utility, calculated to render famous the name of the constructor of it. ... And the particular work referred to may be a temple, as in the instances quoted above or a tank as in the present inscriptions or anything else of a suitable nature". The inscription under discussion referring to an image of a goddess as the kirtli of a queen perfectly bears out the above suggestion of Bhandarkar and Fleet.
Queen Vatsadāvi of ancient Orissa, who installed the image of Chamundå in question apparently in a temple at Jajpur, is not known from any other source. She was probably the wife of one of
Above, Vol. IV, pp. 210 ff. and plate. 1 Ibid., p. 31 and plate.
Ind. Ant., Vol. IX, p. 36, note 13. * Ibid., Vol. XII, pp. 228 f.
Corp. Ins. Ind., Vol. III, p. 212, note 6. * This is in reference to Ind. Ant., Vol. IX, p. 38; XII, pp. 228, 289; XIII. p. 186. Sooloo sboro, Vol XXIV, p. 240 and ..
* These are the Mandar rook inscriptions of the time of Adityastna. • See an article on Kinti: Il connotation in the Siddha-Bharad (Dr. Siddheshwar Varma Prosentation Volume).
Pp. 38-42
