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174
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JUNE, 1911.
SOME UNPUBLISHED INSCRIPTIONS.
BY D. R. BHANDARKAR, M.A.; POONA.
1.-Dhanop Inscription of Chachoha. An account of this inscription, whose transcript is given below, was first read by me in a Hindi booklet by Munshi Devi Prasad of Jodhpur entitled Rajputand-mem Prachina-bolha. It appoars from it that at Dhanop, sixteen miles north of Shahpura, capital of the principality of the same name in Rajpa tâna, two inscription stones were discovered as early as 1878, which have since disappeared. Impressions of the inscriptions were taken by Pandit Ramkaran of Tonk, and it was found that they both belonged to a Rashtrakůta dynasty. One of these, however, was too fragmentary to allow anybody to make much out of it, but the other was, on the whole, well-preserved and gave in ten verses, an account of that dynasty. Two years ago, Pandit Gaurishankar Ojba bad occasion to examine the papers and impressions of Pandit Ramkaran, which are now in the possession of his grandson Pandit Ramnivas. He was able to find out the impressions of one of these well-preserved insoriptions, and was kini enongh to send them to me to make known the contents of it to the antiquarian world, wbich is already indebted to him for preserving and bringing to light many valuable epigraphic records.
The impressions are not quite satisfactory, but with patience and perseverance they enable one to decipher almost the whole of the inscription with certainty. It contains 13 lines of writings, vbicb cover a space of 1-6" high by 7" broad. Line 11 is followed by an indented line which divides it from the repairing. Lines 11–13, again, do not run over the whole, but are engraved only up to the balf of the length of the inscription. The characters belong to the northern class of alphabets, wbich was prevalent during the 10th and 17th centuries. A noteworthy palæographic peculiarity of the inscription is the representation of the medial vowel a by superscript signs placed above the letters instead of by vertical strokes attached to their sides, no doubt, a reminiscence of what we find in the case of all medial vowels in the Vasantga?h inscription of Varmalâta, the Udaipur inscription of Aparajita, and so forth. Attention may also be drawn to the final t in line 13, and also to the numeral, in line 2. The language is Sanskrit and excepting Om namah Sivaya at the beginning and the date at the end, the whole record is in prose. In respect of orthography, the only points that call for attention are (1) the frequent doubling of t in conjunction with a following r, and (2) the use of instead of á.
The inscription opens with an obeisance to Siva. Verse 1 invokes the blessings of that god. Verse 2 speaks of a king named Chachoba, who is represented to have revived the glory of the king Bhallila and to have rebuilt the temple, where the inscription was originally put up. Then we are told that in the lineage of the Rashtrakůtas there was a king called Bhallila (v. 3) and that his son was Dantivarman, who first built this temple (v.4). The sons of the latter were the two kings, Baddharaja and Govinda (v. 5), who erected a temple apparently of red colour and surrounded it with the shrine of some mdta, a step-well and an orchard (.. 6). Many years after their demise, we are further informed, the land which had been granted to the god Sambhu was resumed, and the temple fell in disrepair. Verse 8 says that there was a devotee of Siva and of the Saiva denomination named Nagua-bhatáraka, who say that the god received no worship. He went to king Chachcba, and said : 40 king, this temple belonged to the princes of your family," and induced him to renovate it, which, we are told, had been dedicated to Siva under the name of Dhankebvara (v. 9). This shows that Chachcha was a Rashtrakůta, though we are not informed how he was related to the other Râshtrakata kings mentioned above. Then follows a verse expressing a wish for the endurance of the temple as long as the sun, the moon, the Ganges, &c., last. The eleventh or the last verse tells us that the inscription was engraved by Rimadeva, son of Ramranasahi. The record ends with the date: Saturday, the 5th of the bright half of Vabakha of the (Vikrama) year 1063,
