Indian Antiquary Vol 19

Author(s): John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 64

56
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[FEBRUARY, 1890.
wrong sibilants only in visa (for visha), line 4, and in visrambhéna (for visrambhéna), line 5; but mistakes in regard to the sibilants have given rise to the wrong saridhi in dvishat-suskyach. (for doishach-chhushyach-), line 8, and in namach-chhasmita- (for namat-sasmita), line 12. A final visarga has been wrongly omitted in ahar-aha, nirvvastrá, -kshudha, line 6, and elsewhere; improperly added in -arayôh, line 6; and wrongly left unchanged in -Chuvah tyaktá, line 7, gunah dhármmileah, line 15, and Sambhoh dharmma-, line 16. Before r the consonant t is generally doubled, e. g. in nettra, lines 1, 2 and 3, yattra, line 3, tattra, line 6; and after r, the aspirate bh has been doubled in a wrong manner in phânipair=bhbhôga, line 1, and kirttir=bhbhavishyati, line 14. Of individual words, priya has been throughout spelt priya, in lines 8, 9 and 15, and ujjvala, ujvala, in lines 3, 5, 10 and 16.
The inscription, after the introductory ôm, adoration to Siva,' and five verses in honour of that deity (under the names of Sambhu and Sthâņu), in lines 4-7 glorifies, in conventional terms which tell us nothing, the illustrious Maurya race, and a king of that race named Dhavala. In lines 7-9 it relates that Dhavala had for his friend a prince of the Brâhman caste, named Sankuka, whose wife Dagint bore to him the prince Sivagana. This Sivagana (lines 10-13) built a temple to Siva (Paramèśvara, Dhûrjati) at Kaņvakrama, and endowed it with the revenues of) the two villages Sarvanka and Chonipadraka. Lines 14-17 give the date, the names of the agent employed by the prince, of the writer, &c.; and the inscription concludes with an appeal to the learned, to judge leniently whatever may be faulty in the preceding.
Since from other sources we know nothing yet of the princes mentioned here, our inscription at present is valuable chiefly for the characters in which it is written ; and for the manner in which the date is expressed in line 14, according to which the temple was built when seven hundred and ninety-five years of the Malava lords had gone by.' After what has now been written on the subject by Mr. Fleet, ante, Vol. XV. p. 191, and in his Introduction to Corp. Inscr. Ind., Vol. III. p. 66 ff., it is hardly necessary to say that the era here denoted by the expression of the Malava lords' is the Vikrama era, and that therefore our inscription was put up in A. D. 738-39.
Bat I may perhaps take this opportunity of expressing my doubts, as to whether a certain phrase (of minor importance), in other dates which refer themselves to the Malaya era, has as yet been rightly explained. I allude to the compound gana-sthiti in the two Mandasor inscriptions first published by Mr. Fleet, ante, Vol. XV. p. 198, I. 19, and p. 225, 1. 22. In the first of these inscriptions we read
Malavânàm gana-sthitya yâtë sata-chatushțayê, I trinavaty-adhikê=bdânâm; and in the second
Panchasu katêshu saradam yatêshraêkannanavati-sahitêsha!
MAlava-gana-sthiti-vastukala-jūânîya likhitêshu 11. Professor Peterson, in the Jour. Bo. As. Soc., Vol. XVI. p. 381, has rendered the first passage - “when four hundred and ninety-three years from the establishment [in the country?] of the tribes of the Malavas had passed away." Mr. Fleet has translated the first two words of the first passage by-" by (the rockoning from the tribal constitution of the Malavas," and the corresponding words (Malava-gana-sthiti-vasat) of the second passage by-" from the establishment) of the supremacy of the tribal constitution of the Malavas," adding in a note that it is very difficult to find a satisfactory meaning for the word vasot. Now I think that, in explaining these (what I may be permitteit to call) doubtful phrases, we must start from the very word vasút. Vasát at the end of a compound ordinarily means in consequence of, according to, by means of, by '; in fact, it frequently takes simply the place of the termination of an instrumental case, and in the present instance its employment (due no doubt to the exigencies of the metre) shows at any rate that the word gana-sthitya in the first passage must be taken to be an instrumental, and cannot be translated as an ablative case, in the manner proposed by Professor Peterson. At the same time, I do not believe that it would be permissible to supply, as was done