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No. 10-FRAGMENTARY YAJVAPALA INSCRIPTION FROM NARWAR
(1 Plate)
D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND
(Received on 14.9.58)
The inscription, preserved in the Gwalior Museum, was copied by me when I visited Gwalior about the end of 1952 for attending the Fifteenth Session of the Indian History Congress It was registered as No. 146 of the Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy, 1952-53, Appendix B. The record, stated to have been found at Narwar in the Shivapuri District of the former Gwalior State, is as yet unpublished; but a short notice of it was published by M. B. Garde in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Department of the Gwalior State, V.S. 1982, No. 1. Garde's note was utilised by H. N. Dvivedi in his Gwalior Rajyake Abhilekh, No. 704. It has been supposed that the inscription was engraved during the reign of Asalladēva of the Yajvapāla dynasty of Narwar. Actually, however, the record belongs to the time of Asalla's son Gopala whose known dates range between 1279 and 1289 A.D.
The inscription is engraved on the excavated bed of a squarish stone slab, the four sides of which are raised. There are 18 lines of writing in the record, the inscribed area covering a space about 19 inches long and about 14 inches high. The inscription is incomplete. The last line, which contains the concluding part of verse 22, ends with the first six syllables of a new stanza; but the rest of this verse was not engraved on the stone. It may be supposed that, as in the case of the Ajmer inscription edited above, the writing was continued on a separate slab. But there is some evidence to show that such was not the case. It is interesting to note that there is enough space on the stone below the last line of the record to accommodate several lines of writing. It is clear therefore that the original idea was to engrave on the stone a complete prasasti of the type known from four other inscriptions of the Yajvapala age, preserved in the Gwalior Museum and edited by us elsewhere in this journal, and that, for some reason unknown to us, the engraver gave up the writing after finishing about three-fourths of the work. The reason of course may have been a sudden calamity that befell the persons concerned.
The inscription is not only incomplete but also fragmentary. A layer of stone has peeled off from a considerable area of the surface of the slab. This has resulted in the effacement of a number of letters in all the lines. The number of lost letters is the highest in lines 7-9. The record is a prasasti written in more than 22 stanzas in various metres. The verses are consecutively numbered. In the absence of the concluding part of the inscription, the purpose underlying the composition of the eulogy and its incision on the stone slab cannot be determined; but, considering the fact that the record closely resembles, in all respects, the four other prasastis of the Yajvapāla age recording the excavation of step-wells, it may be suggested that the present inscription was also designed to serve a similar purpose. Indeed it is possible to think that the author of the eulogy was the Mathura Kayastha poet Sivanabhaka who is known to have composed several other prasastis of the reigns of the Yajvapala kiugs Gopala and Ganapati. The known dates of these rulers range between 1279 and 1300 A.D. Verses 1-2 containing adoration to the gods Murari (Vishnu) and Sambhu (Siva) refer to the reflection of the former on the cheek of Lakshmi and of the latter on the ear-ring of Siva (Kali). The idea contained in the first of the two stanzas is actually found in verse 2 of a prasasti composed by Sivanabhaka during the reign of Yajvapala Gopala in V.S.
1 Vol. XXIX, pp. 178 ff.
2 See above, pp. 31 ff.; vol. XXXII, pp. 334 ff.
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