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No. 40-BAMHANGAVAN SATI STONE INSCRIPTION, V. S. 1404
BALOHANDRA JAIN, RAIPUR
(Keceived on 18.5.1959)
The inscription published here was discovered by me at the village of Bamhangavan about two miles from the Kymore Cement Factories in the Murwara Sub-Division of the Jabalpur Distriot of Madhya Pradesh, during my tour in that area in the month of October 1957. It was examined by me' in situ.
The inscription is incised on a stone slab measuring 1'7" in length and 1'5" height. There are nine lines of writing in the record in the Nāgāri characters of the 14th century A.D.' The language is Sanskrit. There are a number of grammatical and orthographical errors in the inscription, which show that the composer of the epigraph had little knowledge of the language.
The record is dated in the [Vikrama) year 1404 (1347 AD.), Tuesday the eleventh day of the bright fortnight of the month of Ashādha,' when Mahäräjādhiraja Virarăjadēva was ruling at Uchahadā. Another inscription of the time of Virarājadev., dated in V.S. 1412, was found at Karitalai, seven miles from Kymore, which shows that his kingdom extraded upto the northern part of the Jabalpur District.
The inscription records that Räjä Mänigadēu (Māņikyadēva), who was the son of Rājā Sahajū of the Sõmagauri götra and was born in the Agravāla-vamsa, was killed in a battle fought at the village of Kalaharā situated in the MIlahiya vishaya and that bis wife Rēvā, the daughter of Surāgachandra, cremated herself on her husband's funeral pyre. Harikēšava, son of Rēva and Māņikyadēva, caused the inscription to be inscribed on the stone.
Among the geographical names mentioned in this record, Uchahada (ancient Uchchakalpa) which was the capital of Virarājadēva is identified with modern Uchahara, a railway station near Maihar. Milahiya can be identified with Maihar. Kalahara where Māņikyadēva was killed in the battle, is represented by the modern village of that name tuated near Vijayaraghogarh.
[The details of the date correspond regularly to the 19th June 1347 A.D.--Ed.) * Cunningham, ASI, Vol. IX, p. 113; Hiralal's List, 2nd edition, p. 39, No. 48.
Hiralal's reference to Cunningham's Report quoted by Mr. Jain, is wrong. Hiralal spouks of a ruler named Viraramadeva, and apparently intended to refer to Cunningham's Vol. IX, Plate II, No. 3, which is an inscription from Karitalai dated V. 8. 1412 (1355 A.D.) and mentions a ruler named Viraramadēva. But another record (loo. cit., p. 34, Plate II, No. 4) from Rampur, dated V.8. 1404, Phalguna-badi 14 (probably corresponding to the 27th February 1348 A.D.), speaks of the sati of two queens of Virarājadeva.-Ed.]
[The correct reading of the name of Rēva's father seems to be Rämänanda.-Ed.)
[The inscription does not mention Harikőbara as the son of Manikyadēva. It speaks of a stone-outter namo Kabava who was responsible for fashioning the slab.--Ed.)
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