________________
178 EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[Vol. XXIX No. 25-AJMER STONE INSCRIPTION
(1 Plate)
D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND While dealing with the stone inscription containing portions of the Sanskrit drama entitled Harkelinātaka, composed by king Vigraharāja (1153-64 A.C.) of the Chahamana or Chauhan dynasty of Sākambhari, F. Kielhorn' deplored the strange vicissitidues of fortune that led the stones, on which the royal author made the products of his muse known to the people, to "have been used as common building material for a place of Muhammadan worship by the conquerors of his descendants." Portions of the above drama as well as of the Lalita-Vigraharaja-nūčaka, composed in honour of the Chūhamana king by his court poet, Mahākavi Somadova, which were edited by Kiclhorn, were copied from stone slabs embedded in the walls of the Arhāi-din-ku-Jhõprā, a mosque situated on the lower slope of the Tārāgash hill at Ajmer. The mosque, as is well known, was built out of the spoils of Hindu structures by Qutb-ud-din Aibak (first Sultan of Delhi, 120610 A.C.) in 1200 A.C., while Sultan Iltutmish (1211-36 A.C.) subsequently beautified it with a screen. Impressions of another inscription on a stone slab from the samo mosque were recently supplied to me by Mr. U. C. Bhattacharya, Curator of the Rajputana Museum, Ajmer. It appears that all these inscribed slabs had originally belonged to some temples or public buildings raised by the imperial Chūhaminas, the materials of which were later utilized in the construction of the Arhāidin-ka-Jhõprā.
The impressions of the Ajmer (Aghãi-din-ka-Jhpörü) inspcription, reccived by me from [Mc. U. C. Bhattacharya, had a printed slip attached to them. It assigns the inscription to the twelfth century and mentions it as exhibit No. 256 of the Rajputana Museum. It further says, " This inscription forms the beginning of a Sanskrit pocm engraved on slabs. It contains invocation to Nārāyana and various other gods and states that the Chauhāns belonged to the solar race". The description of the contents is, however, not strictly accurate.
The inscription under discussion covers a space nearly 4' 2" in length nd l' 9" in height. There are altogether 27 lines of writing, each letter being a little above in height. The engraving is neat and beautiful, although the stone is damaged in several places and some letters have broken away. As, however, the engraver is sometimes found to have avoided a damaged part of the stone (cf. the damaged space between vähao and [no] in line 2, between väta-vyädhi and yuto in line 4, between kumuda" and "d=ambhoja in line 24), there is no doubt that the stone was defective in laces oven when the inscription was incised.
The palaeography and orthography of the inscriptin resemble closely, those of other records of about the twlefth century found in the same area, and nothing calls for special mention. As the mosque, to which the inscribed stone belongs, is known to have been built in 1200 A.C. with the spoils of local structures, it is possible to attribute the date of the record to some time between the accession of the Chāhamana king Ajayarāja (circa 1110-35 A.C.) who is credited with the foundation of Ajayamēru, now known as Ajmer, and with beautifying it with many temples and palaces, and 1200 A.C. when the Aphāi-din-ka-Jhôprā was constructed, that is to say, somewhere in the twelfth century.
Seo 1A, Vol. XX, pp. 201 ff., Göllinger Festschrift, 1901, pp. 16-30. 914, loc. cit; Göttinger Festschrift, op cit., pp. 1-15. . Camb. Hist. Ind., Vol. p. 581. • Ray, Dynastic History of Northern India, Vol. II, p. 1071.
