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No. 14-THREE INSCRIPTIONS IN BARIPADA MUSEUM
(1 Plata) D. C. SIROAR, OOTACAMUND
(Iteceived on 30.8.1957) There is a small stone pillar preserved in the Museum at Baripada in the Mayurbhanj Distriot of Orissa. The pillar is four-sided and measures about 14 inches in length, 5 inches in breadth and 31 inches in thickness. Three of its faces bear each an inscription in three lines. Sometime before the year 1915, the inscribed stone was brought to Baripada by Mr. Kamakhya Prasad Basu, thon an officer of the former Mayurbhanj State, from the village of Podagadhi in the Udala Subdivision of Mayurbhanj, lying about 4 miles from Udala. There is a temple of the goddess Bhimi or Bhimēsvarl in the forest adjoining the village and the internal evidence of the records would Buggest that the stone was secured from the area of the said shrine.
The inscriptions were recently published by Pandit Satyanarayana Rajaguru in The Orissa Historical Research Journal, Vol. I, No. 2, July 1952, pp. 178-79, with Plates. While going through Pandit Rajaguru's article, I felt that most of his views on the inscriptions, including their eading and interpretation, are unacceptable. Thus, in the first place, he assigns the three inscriptions on paleographical grounds to different periods ranging from the ninth to the eleventh century and apparently considers the record mentioning Dhruvarāja to be the latest amongst the three. I, on the othor hand, hayo no doubt that Dhruvarāja's epigraph is the earliest of the three records and that they may be asained on palæographical grounds to the 10th century A.D. The three sides of the slab bear votive records of three different rulers; but the king, who was responsible for fashioning the stone into a pillar for the definite purpose of incising his record on it, is expected to have used one of the two broader faces (5 inches wide) of the pillar and not one of the narrower side faces (3 inches wido). It has to be noticed that Dhruvaraja's inscription occupies a broader face of the pillar, the opposite side at its back remaining blank and the left and right faces bearing the two other inscriptions. It appears that the stone was so placed originally in the temple of a goddess that only the thres inscribed faces were visible to the visitors and that at first there was inscription only on its front face, the two side faces boing inscribed at later dates. This is also suggested by the fact that, of the three records, Dhruvarāja's inscription is the most nestly and carefully engraved apparently because, as already indicated above, the stone was dressed for the special purpose of engraving his record. Its characters also appear to be somewhat earlier than those of the other two epigraphs. Secondly, according to Pandit Rajaguru, the two other records speak of Kumāra Dharmarāja alias Durgariya and Satrubhañja respectively. In my opinion, what has been read as Kumira-Dharmarājēna is very clearly Kumāravarmarājēna, so that the person referred to is a king namel Kumaravarman and not & prince namel Dharmarāja. Moreover, I do not find the naine Durgaraya in this record nor the name Satrubhañja in the other. Thirdly, I do not agree with Pandit Rajaguru's reading and interpretation of the purport of any of the three epigraphs, even though it has to be admitted that, excepting Dhruvarāja's record, the two other inscriptions are very carelessly engraved and are therefore extremely difficult to read and interpret especially because both of them
damaged, a few letters being lost at the end of the lines.
Such being the case, I requested Mr. P. Acharya, Superintendent of Archaeology, Government of Orissa, to be so good as to send me a few inked impressions of the inscriptions for study. Although Mr. Acharya could not send me the impressions required by me, he was very kind to place A So. N. N. Varu, The Archæological Survey of Mayurbhanj, Vol. I, 1911, p. 85.
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