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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
(VOL. XXXII
Verse 1 introduces a person who was a member of the council of the hereditary ministers (maul-āmātya-sabhā) of the king of Gauda, whose name is not mentioned. The name of the officer in doubtful, but seems to be Mangadēva. He is further stated to have been the Mahäsändhivi: grahika (i.e. minister for war and peace) of his master. Verse 2 speaks of the said officer's son whose name was Changadēva. He is stated to have received the title 'Rāņaka of the Kingdom' which, as the epigraph says, was very difficult to obtain. There is little doubt that, like his father, Changadēva was also a servant of the Gauda king who honoured him with the said title ; but the king is not even referred to in the stanza.
Verse 3 introduces Bhimadēva who was the son of Changadēva and the hero of the prasasti. Like his grandfather, Bhimadēva is described as the Mahāsāndhivigrahika of the lord of the Gauda country. Verse 4 praises the military exploits and liberality of Bhimadēva in a vague way. In the first half of the stanza, the poet says that one of the battle-fields, where Bhimadēva destroyed his enemies' elephant force and which was bristling with arrows, narrated, as it were, the story of his valour and that, because it disliked its repetition (i.e. another battle fought on itself), it failed to appreciate fully his great prowess which was exhibited in battles elsewhere. According to the second half of the verse, in bestowing gifts to the numerous supplicants, Bhimadēva used the waters of the rivers so profusely that those rivers completely dried up whilo new streams began to flow on the dry earth. The next stanza (verse 5) refers to one of his significant achievements. It is stated that he saved the kingdom of Gauda-Varēndra after it had been immersed in the waters of the ocean that was the forces of the king of the Rāyāri lineage and the king of Kallaga. In this connection, the condition of the Gauda-Varēndra kingdom, apparently under the rule of Bhimadēva's master, is compared with that of an old vessel in the state of sinking in waters. Verse 6 refers to the object of the eulogy which is to record the construction of a temple of the god Bhava (i.e. Siva) by Bhimadēva on the bank of the Avimukta-nadi. The purpose of Bhimadēva in building the temple is stated to have been to cause wonder in the minds even of his enemies. The last stanza (verse 7) says that the top of the temple was adorned with a golden jar resembling aditya-kācha, probably meaning the jewel called suryakanta.
The inscription raises certain interesting problems. The first of these relates to the date of the record and the second to the identity of Bhimadeva's master, i.e. the king of Gauda or the Gauda-Varēndra kingdom, whom he served as the minister for war and peace. The third problem refers to the circumstances leading to the construction of the temple at Banaras by Bhimadēva far away from the kingdom of Gauda or Gauda-Varēndra and the fourth to the invasion (probably a joint invasion) of the Gauda-Varēndra kingdom by the forces of a king of the Rīyāri dynasty and a king of Kalinga, from which Bhimadēva claims to have saved it. The fifth problem is the identity of the two enemies of Gauda-Varandra.
As to the date of the record, the palaeography does not appear to suggest a period earlier than the twelfth century. The form of the initial vowel i in our inscription has resemblance with the fourth stage in its final formation as illustrated by Ojha in his charts showing the development of the Dēva nāgari and Bengali alphabets as well as with its form in his illustrations from two inscriptions of 1264 and 1273 A.D. respectively. R. D. Banerji traced the earliest occurrence of a somewhat similar form of i in the Bodhgaya inscriptions of Asokachalla, which belong to the thirtonnth century. But we know that the Gauda-Varēndra country in the western and northern
.800 Ojha, Palaeography of India (Hindi), Platos LXXXII and LXXXIII.
Ibid., Plate XXVII.
• The Origin of the Bengali Script. p. 89. The letter as found in those inscriptions (above, Vol. XII, Plate bot. woon pp. 28 and 29) appears to be pomowhat more developed than its form in the inscription under study. As regards the development of the Bengali form of the letter i. see also lines 8 and 31 of the Madanpara plato of Vi vari pasbna (JA8, Letters, Vol. XX, 1964, Plate between pp. 210 and 217).
