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11 Plata
No. 27—NAGARJUNAKONDA INSCRIPTION OF EHAVALASRI'S TIME, YEAR 11
(1 Plate) B. CH. CAHABRA, New Delhi
(Received on 5.6.1958) The subjoined stone inscription was copied and examined by me in July 1957 at Nagarjunakopda in the course of my epigraphical tour. It is peculiar in several respects : it is one of the comparatively few Sanskrit inscriptions that have been discovered at this site, most of them being in Prakrit; it is Brahmanistic in nature, the Prakrit ones being all Buddhistic; it is found in six or seven versions, all broken fragments, not a single version having been found in its entirety. It took me some hours to dovetail the fragments till then discovered and kept in the site museum at Nagarjunakonda. Many of the fragments are still missing. I was, however, able to restore the complete text by deciphering the extant parts on the various fragments. The facsimile on Plate A shows the greater part of one of the versions, while those on Plate B represent parts of two more versions. The fragments, of the other versions, so far discovered, are too few and are hence not illustrated here.
The ancient site of Nāgārjunakonda is situated on the right bank of the Krishņā river in the Guntur Digrtict of Andhra Pradesh, and is famous for the Buddhist relics it has yielded in abundance. Of late, the site has been rendered more famous by the Nandikonda Dam Project ; for this hydro-electric scheme, when complete, will have submerged the entire site, as the water so dammed will rise 60 to 70 feet over the vast area now dotted with the excavated antiquarian remains. The Union Department of Archaeology is thus discharging a very special and emergent responsibility of disembowelling, as fast as can be, the buried ruins and salvaging as many of them as it can possibly do before the threatened deluge takes place.
It may be remarked that the recent digging operations at Nāgārjunakoņda have laid bare many Brahmanistic antiquities, whereas those formerly unearthed there almost all belong to the Buddhist faith.
The size of the inscribed bits of stone under study is indicated by the scale given in the photographs reproduced here. The inscription consists of six lines in each version. Though the duct of writing is markedly different in each version, the script in all of them is the same Brāhmi of about the 3rd or 4th century A.D. It resembles that of the Prakrit inscriptions discovered at the same place, and shares with it the characteristic feature of long and curved top and bottom strokes of the letters. The engraving is neatly and elegantly done.
As noticed above, the language of the inscripton is Sanskrit. The composition is remarkably free from errors. Except for the auspicious formula siddham at the beginning, the record is in verse, comprising two stanzas, the first in the Anushțubh metre and the second in Sragdhara. These are logically arranged; the first, being a small one, is divided into halves, each half occupying one line; and the second, being a lengthy one, is divided into quarters, each quarter occupying one line.
There is not much that calls for special notice in the script. The mute consonants are shown by the smaller size of the letter concerned : cf. m in lines 1 and 6, and t in line 5. Besides, they ocour
This is No. 8 of A.R.Kp., 1957-58, App. B. . Cf. above, Vol. XX, pp. 1 ff.
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