Epigraphia Indica Vol 34

Author(s): D C Sircar
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India

Page 50

No. 5 -- TARACHANDI ROCK INSCRIPTION OF PRATAPADHAVALA, V.S. 1225
(1 Plate) D. C. SIROAR, OOTACAMUNT
(Received on 28.1.1959) The inscription is engraved on a smoothed space on what may be regarded as the back wall of an open cavern to the proper left of the representation of the goddess Tārāchandi on the rock in a locality of the same name about 3 miles to the south of Sasarām or Sahasrām in the Shahabad District of Bihar. For the protection of the writing, the Department of Archæology, Government of India, has closed the opening of the cavern by a front wall leaving an entrance at the left end. There are only six lines of writing which covers an area about 71 feet in length and about 14 feet in height. Line 6 is small and contains only twelve aksharas followed by a mark of punctuation. Individual letters are in average a little above two inches high. The preservation of the writing is satisfactory. But, owing to the presence of a long block of stone lying in front of the left half of the epigraph, the letters of the last line, which covers a space about one foot in length beneath the beginning of line 4, cannot be clearly seen. It is also difficult to take a satisfactory impression of the letters of this line.
The inscription under study was discovered by Francis Buchanan (afterwards Hamilton) in 1812-13 while he was conducting the survey of the District of Shahabad. His note on the contents of the epigraph was based on his Pandit's fantastic reading and strange interpretation.' H. T. Colebrooke noticed the inscription with an English translation about a decade after its discovery? while F. E. Hall's transcript and translation of the record were published in 1860. Unfortunately epigraphic studies were then at the initial stage. Neither of the two scholars had any opportunity of examining the original record and, while Colebrooke seems to have received an impression of it from the collection of Buchanan Hamilton, Hall appears to have depended on its transcript prepared for him by his Pandit. As a result, the transcript published by Hall has several errors while the translations of both Colebrooke and Hall contain mony inaccuracies. The year of the date is given by Colebrooke as Samvat 1229 or 1173 A.D. but by Hall as Sarvat 1225. Kielhorn was therefore not in a position to determine as to which of the readings is correct," since no facsimile of the record was ever published. A locality called Suvarnahala or Svarnahala is mentioned in the epigraph twice in the expressions Suvarınahala-ja (i.e. born at Suvarnahala) in line 1 and Svarnnahaliya (i.e. belonging to Svarnahala) in line 4. But Colebrooke read the expressions als suvalluhalaja avd suvalluhaniya respectively, while Hall read them respectively as su-daydahaki-ja and su-danda-haliya, the first being explained by him as 'sprung from men of goodly staves and ploughs' and the second as '[sundry) folk of goodly staves and ploughs'. In elucidation of his interpretation, Hall added that the people in question were taunted by hinting that they were
Pratápadhavala of the inscription was supposed to have been the father of king Vijayachandra of Kanauj. Buchanan Hamilton's note was referred to by Colebrooke in his paper mentioned below. His report on the Shaha. had District has now been published by the Bihar Research Society, Patna.
See Chlebrooke's Miscellaneous Essays. Vol. II, pp. 289-96. The paper was read at a public meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society on the 4th December 1824.
* See JAOS, Vol. VI, 1860, pp. 538, 547-49. The paper was written two years earlier. Cf. Saugor, February 18.58 ' at the end of the article in op. cit.. p. 549.
Cf. op. cit., pp. 290-91. . Ind. Ant., Vol. XIX, p. 184, No. 143; above, Vol. V, Appendix. p. 29. Xo. 153.
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