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160 EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
(VOL. XXXIV study resembles the Sakrāl inscription. Some consonants following r have been reduplicated. Final m at the end of the halves of stanzas have been wrongly changed to anusvāra while anusvāra has been wrongly changed to the guttural nasal in vante in line 4.
The date of the record, quoted at the end of the last line, reads Sarvat 201 Chaittra-fudi ........., the number of the tithi having broken away after di. Considering the palaeography of the insoription, we have no doubt that the year of the date should be referred to the Harsha era starting from 606 A.D. so that the year 201 would correspond to 807 A.D. As expected, the date of our inscription throws welcome light on the disputed date of the Sakrãi inscription. The object of our inscription is to record the erection of a temple by Adityanāga, son of Vödda. The same Adityanāga, son of Vödda, was one of the eleven persons forming a committee that was responsible for the construction of a mandapa in front of the temple of the goddess Sankarā (i.e. the modern Sakral or Sakarāyamita) as recorded in the Sakrai inscription. The two inscriptions therefore belong to the same period and cannot be separated by a long interval.
We have seen that Ojha read the date of the Sakral inscription as V.S. 749 without noticinz that Bhandarkar had previously read it as V.S. 879. Chhabra does not notice Ojha's reading, but comments elaborately on the reading of the date offered by Bhandarkar. Bhandarkar says, "The reading of the first cipher of the date, viz. 8, is certain ; but I am by no means sure regarding the two following ciphers as they are entirely new and not known to us from previous records." The third figure is, however, clearly 9 as now known from several inscriptions. Chhabra points out that Bhandarkar's reading of the date of the Sakrāi inscription is admittedly tentative, the only point in its support being that there was an intercalary Ashādha in V.8. 879 as required by the inscription. He then observes, "Nevertheless, there is one glaring discrepanoy whioh would oompel its rejection.......... the script of the present epigraph bears a close resemblance to that of the Madhuban plate on the one hand and to that of the Kudärköt stone inscription on the other. The date of the first is the year 25 of the Harsha era, equal to A. D. 630-1, while the second has been assigned, on more or less equally sure grounds, 'to about the latter half of the seventh century A. D.' Now if the similarity of script is not to be taken lightly, we cannot afford to assign our record to the first half of the ninth century, or to A.D. 822 to be precise, which would be equivalent to V.S. 879. That would remove it from the other two by close on two hundred years in point of time. And palaeographically speaking, that is an impossibility." It is contended that one of the Nāgārjunikonda inscriptions exhibits little difference between the signs for 6 and 8 (resembling hà and ha respectively) and that the figure 9 written in the Kärltalai inscription of Lakshmanarāja resembles the second of the three figures in the date of the Sakral inscription. Chhabra therefore suggests the reading of the date of the Sakrāi inscription as V.8. 699. Unfortunately Chhabra's views on the reading of the figures used in the Sakrās inscription as well as on the palaeography of the record are, in our opinion, clearly wrong.
In the first place, the first of the three figures, which looks like hră, was quite confidently read by Bhandarkar as 8 and there can be no doubt about the correctness of this reading. The third figure is undisputedly 9. Thus the date refers to the ninth century of the Vikrama era.
"I do not think that the year can be referred to the Bhâţiks era fabricated by the Bhatt kings of Jaisalmer long after its epoch in the 7th century. See above, Vol. XXX, p. 7 and note 4.
* See Ojha, Bharatiya Prachin Lipimala, Plate LXXV (lower half). . Above, Vol. VII, pp. 155 ff. and Plate. Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 179 ff. and Plate.
Above, Vol. XX, p. 21 and Plate, text line 2. Attention is also drawn to the sign for 6 looking like ha in the Komarti plates of Chandavarman (above, Vol. IV, Plate facing p. 145).
'Ibid., Vol. XXIV, Plate facing p. 334.
See Ojha, op, oit., Plate LXXTI (upper half). This reading is now supported by the date of 146 Khandola ingoription.
