Epigraphia Indica Vol 34

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

Page 95

No. II]
FRAGMENTARY INSCRIPTIONS FROM CHITORGARH
Abhayadatta as Rajasthaniya) and Daksha alias Nirdosha (who excavated a well in the memory of his uncle Abhayadatta in the year 532 A. D. during the reign of Yasodharman Vishnuvardhana probably at Dasapura or Mandasor where the inscription has been found). In the inscription under study, the introduction of the reigning monarch is followed by that of his governor of the Dasapura-Madhyama region, who was the hero of the prasasti and whose pedigree is introduced immediately afterwards. This kind of reintroduction of the hero of a eulogy for the second time as the descendant of his ancestors is also known from other inscriptions.1
The fourth verse of our inscription (line 4) mentions a person named Varaha and the next stanza (i.e. the fifth verse in lines 4-5) another named Vishnudatta who appears to have been the son of Varäha. The sixth stanza (line 5), only a few letters at the beginning of which are preserved, apparently mentioned Vishnudatta's wife whose name is lost, while the following verse (i.e. the seventh stanza in line 6) obviously introduces the son of Vishnudatta and his wife. The fact that the eighth verse in line 7 apparently refers to a construction (probably of a temple) in an area to the north of the temple of Manorathasvamin shows that Vishnudatta's son, whose name is lost, was the hero of the eulogy under study. The last verse in line 8 continues the description of the pious act referred to in the previous stanza. The word kirti used in it may refer to the person's fame in a general way or in the special sense of an object like a temple that was calculated to render the name of its builder famous. It thus appears that the object of both the inscriptions under study was to record certain pious deeds (probably the building of some shrines) of Vishnudatta's son who was the governor of Dasapura and Madhyama under a king of the Malwa-Rajasthan region about the first half of the 6th century A. D., to which age the epigraphs have to be assigned on grounds of palaeography.
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As regards Dasapura and Madhyama, the reference may be to the districts around the cities of those names. Dasapura is the well-known ancient name of modern Mandasor, which is about 65 miles to the south-south-east of Chitorgarh, the findspot of the present records, and which, as noted above, has yielded several inscriptions of king Yasodharman Vishnuvardhana and was no doubt the capital of the rulers of the Aulikara dynasty including the said monarch. It is thus probable that Vishnudatta's son was the governor of the metropolitan province of the Aulikara kingdom.
Madhyama is evidently the same as Madhyamikä mentioned in a number of literary, epigraphic and numismatic records of ancient India. The earliest epigraphic reference to this place is found in a fragmentary Prakrit inscription from Barlis in the Ajmer District, Rajasthan, which speaks of a person as Majhimika (Sanskrit Madhyamika), an inhabitant of Madhyamika.' The inscription has been assigned to a date about the end of the second or the beginning of the first century B. C. Patanjali's Mahabhashya, composed earlier about the first half of the 2nd century B. C., speaks of the siege of Madhyamikä by a Yavana king during the author's life time. A number of coins bearing the legend Majhamikaya Sibi-janapadasa (Sanskrit Madhyamikāyāḥ or 'kāyāṁ Sibi-janapadasya), [the coin] of the Sibi State [struck at] Madhyamika' or ' [the coin] of the Sibi State of Madhyamika,' were found at Nagari, eight miles to the north of Chitorgarh, and also at Chitorgarh itself." Kielhorn identified Majhamika of the legend on these coins with Madhyamika
etc.
1 Cf. the inscriptions of Gayadatunga (below, pp. 91 ff.).
Cf. CII, Vol. III, p. 212, note 6.
Ibid. p. 79 and note 2.
See above, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 205 ff.
JBRS, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 34-38.
Cf. The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 107.
Cf. Allan, Catalogue of Indian Coins (Ancient India), p. oxxiv; D. R. Bhandarkar, MASI, No. 4, p. 122;