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No. 22-KALANJARA INSCRIPTION OF V. S. 1147
(I Plate)
SANT LAL KATARE, JABALPUR
The inscription, which is being edited here for the first time, is engraved on a stone slab built into the wall of the sanctum of a temple dedicated to the god Nilakantha at Kalañjara.1 It is noticed by Dr. N. P. Chakravarti in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for the year 1935-36, pp. 93-94. It appears that Siva in the form of Nilakantha was widely worshipped in the Chandella dominions as temples dedicated to this deity are found both at Kālañjara and Ajayagarh.
The inscription covers an area 2-1' long and 1.5' wide. It has in all 20 lines of writing and a short marginal note of four lines on the left side at the lower end of the main epigraph. As the stone slab is damaged on both the sides, a few letters in the beginning and at the end of some of the lines have been lost, yet the text of the main inscription can be almost fully restored. The marginal note is so badly damaged that very little can be read except the name of Vasudeva in line 1.
The characters are of the 11th century A.D. The orthographical peculiarities are the doubling of the consonant following the superscript and the use of the dental s for both the palatal é and the lingual sh. The prishtha, agra and urdhva mātrās are used to indicate the medial è, ai, ō and au.
The Language is Sanskrit. It is in verse upto the 16th line and in prose from lines 16 to 20. There are some mistakes in the writing and they have been corrected either in the text or in footnotes.
The object of the inscription is to record the construction of a mandapa for the temple of Nilakantha by Srimurti, the guru of Kirtivarman. The donation of land measuring two ploughs was made at the time of the dhvajärōhaṇa ceremony, i.e. the opening ceremony of the mandapa. Who donated the land is not clear. It may be Sutradhara Rāma who built the mandapa; but since the text is not complete and the marginal note consisting of that portion of the main text which had been by mistake left out by the scribe is very badly defaced, it is not possible to know the donor. As the name of Vasudeva occurs in the marginal note, it is not also unlikely that he was the donor of the land".
The inscription opens with a salutation to Siva. Verse 1 sings the praise of Siva as the pillar of the world. In the second verse is praised Srimurti, the guru (preceptor) of king Kirtivarman, as one who had attained the glory of knowledge by the favour of the pair of the lotus-like feet of Trinetra (Siva). He is further described in the next two verses. It is stated that he built a beautiful mandapa for the temple of the god Nilakantha at Kalañjara. The royal preceptor directed the chief of the royal érikaranas, the Saivas, the Pasupatas and their acharya Värika and others that
1 For the description of the Nilakantha shrine and notices of inscriptions at Kalanjara, see Cunningham, Arch. Surv. Rep., Vol. XXI, parts i and ii, pp. 32 ff.
[See below, p. 166, note 1-Ed.] [See below, p. 164, note 1-Ed.] [See below, p. 166, note 2-Ed.]
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