________________
128 EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[Vol. XXX goldsmith named Hariram N. Soni who takes interest in the antiquities of the area. A few years later, the news of the discovery of the inscription reached the ears of Mr. M. C. Chaubey soon after he had come to join the Government Intermediate College at Mandasör as Lecturer in History, Mr. Chaubey took photographs of the inscription and sent them for examination to a few students of Indian history known to him. The inscription was next brought by Mr. Chaubey to the College premises where a small museum was started under the guidance of Mr. N. S. Purandare, Principal of the College. About the middle of 1954, one of Mr. Chaubey's photographs of the inscription reached the office of the Government Epigraphist for India through Dr. S. L. Katare, then Professor of the Jabalpur Mahavidyalaya. In January 1955 I visited Mandasör and copied the inscription.
The inscribed space on the stone slab covers an area about 10 inches in breadth and about 9 inches in height. The inscription is fragmentary. Some letters have broken away from both the left and right sides while the concluding lines of the original record, probably containing & date and the names of the scribe and engraver, are also lost. The extant portion of the inscription contains only eleven lines of writing; but just a few letters of the eleventh line are now visible. Originally a line of the epigraph contained about twentyfour aksharas. Each akshara measures about inch or more in height. In spite of its fragmentary nature, the record, when studied along with the Chhõți Sadri inscription edited above, throws some light on a rather dark period of the history of Dasapura which stood on the site of present Mandasör.
The characters closely resemble those of the Chhoti Sadri inscription (491 A. D.) and the record has to be assigned to a date about the end of the fifth century A.D., not only on palaeographical considerations but also for the fact that both the epigraphs were incised during the reign of the same ruler. The signs of medial u and ů (cf. satputra in line 4, Harigir-ēti in line 6, anuttama in line 7, kūpās=cha in line 8, etc.) and subscript din mandapās-cha (line 8) are interesting to note. The end of the second and fourth feet of a stanza is often indicated by a slightly curved horizontal stroke. The ordinary double danda has, however, been placed at the end of verses 1-2, while at the end of a half stanza, apparently treated by the author as a full verse, in line 5, we have a danda with its upper part curved towards the left. The language of the ingcription is Sanskrit. It is written in verse, the metre of the extant stanzas being Anushtubh. There is, however, not a single stanza which is fully preserved. The beauty of the composition of this small fragmentary poem in the simplest of Sanskrit metres is marred by a number of orthographical and grammatical errors as well as by the weakness of the author's style. Although such defects are more marked in the Chhoti Sadri inscription, which is a much longer record composed in several classical metres, it is possible to suspect that it was the same poet who was responsible for the composition of both the records. As regards orthographical and grammatical errors in the present inscription, attention may be drawn to garutma-ratha for garutmad-ratha (line 1), samkkhë for samkhye (line 2), varddhana for varddhana (twice in line 4), putraḥ for putro (line 4) and idam for ayam (line 9). Mistakes like datvā for dattvā (line 7) and satva for sattva (line 10) are of course of common occurrence in early Indian epigraphs while tapa for tapas (line 7) is not unknown to Sanskrit lexicons. The following stylistic defects in the author's composition may also be noticed in this connection. The use of the seventh case-ending (bhāvē saptami) in verse 2 in lines 2-3 suggests that the author is going to describe an event that happened during the reign of a ruling king mentioned in it. The event in question, however, is referred to in a stanza in lines 9-10 about the end of the epigraph and the intervening stanzas deal with facts which relate to the ancestors of the person responsible for the said event and mostly happened before the reign of the ruler referred to in verse 2. Then again, in line 5, & ruler is mentioned with the third case-ending suggesting that the author was going to describe some of his activities. But this expected description of his deeds is found only after two complete stanzas referring to facts that relate to the maternal grandfather and mother of the said ruler. As will be seen below, the first
