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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[VOL. XXXIV
of Vishnu at Kōkāmukha (modern Barah Chhatra) in Nepal,1 while, in the sixth century, a king of East Malwa visited Prayaga near Allahabad where he sacrificed his life in the fire made of cow dung cakes.2
As regards the reading of the Devaprayag inscriptions, the first letter in No. 4 is i (not i)3 and the third letter in No. 19 looks like ba (not ba). What has been read in No. 17 as Adhishṭhāna looks like Budhiprāna.
I. Inscriptions in the Vārāņasi Sanskrit University Museum 1. Fragmentary Inscription of the time of Rudradāma śrī
This is a fragmentary inscription engraved on a stone slab measuring about 14 inches by 19 inches. There are only four lines of writing, the end of all of which is broken away and lost along with the right hand portion of the slab. As regards the extant part of the epigraph also, a few letters are damaged in line 1 while a number of them are lost in the other lines owing to a layer of the stone having peeled off. The inscribed slab is stated to have been secured by Shr. Kubernath Shukla from Agiabir in the Mirzapur District, U.P.
The characters belong to the Middle Brahmi alphabet of north India and the inscription may be palaeographically assigned to a date about the third or fourth century A. D. Interesting from the palaeographical point of view are the letters m, l, s and h which are of the so-called Eastern Gupta type. The letter sh, which occurs in the damaged akshara shtha in line 4, seems also to belong to the same variety. The language of the inscription is Sanskrit slightly influenced by Prakrit.
The inscription begins with the word siddham which is followed by the aksharas: Mahārāja .. tatanga-Rudradamasri, the rest of the line being broken away. This line of the record undoubtedly refers to the reign of a king named Mahārāja Rudradāmasri. Since line 2 begins with the word [e]taya (Sanskrit étasyam) after which traces of the word purvvāyām are visible, the date of the inscription quoting a year with reference to the said king must have been broken away at the end of the line. We can therefore safely restore the passage as Rudradāmasriyaḥ sam (or samvatsare)...which appears to have been followed by the details of the date in the style of the records of the rulers of the early centuries of the Christian era such as the Sakas of Western
India."
About two aksharas are damaged between mahārāja and tatanga, the latter being apparently the concluding part of a second name of Mahārāja Rudradāmasri. But whether this second name of the king was written in four or five aksharas cannot be determined since the first of the two damaged aksharas may be sya so that the preceding expression is mahārājasya. It has, however, to be admitted that the traces of the letter following ja appear to suggest m rather than s.
The latter part of line 2 seems to mention the name of a person called Sugama in the sixth case-ending while the correspondig part of line 3 reads [kuliko Vět[i] probably referring to a devakulika (the superintending priest of a temple) named Võti... In line 4, we can read [pratishtha]pitam priya, the second word apparently being priyatam which appears to have been followed by a word indicating a deity. It is not possible to be sure about the object that was installed. But the word pratishthäpitam sugggests that it was not a pratima (image) in the feminine gender but may have been a devakula or shrine or some other object (in the neuter) for the deity in question.
1 Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India, pp. 217 ff.
2 Cf. Journ. As. Soc., Letters, Vol. XI, 1945, p. 70, note 3.
That this three-dot type of i was used in South India as late as the fourth century is suggested by the Hirahadagalli plates (Ojha, Bharatiya Prachin Lipimälä, Plate XV).
See, e.g. Select Inscriptions, p. 176, text lines 3-4.
Cf., e.g. ibid., p. 134, text line 5; JBRS, Vol. XXXIX, Parts 1-2, 1953, p. 5; JUPHS, Vols, XXIV. XXV, p. 136,
