________________
JAINA EPIGRAPHS
PART III
Inscriptions in the Kopbal District
INSCRIPTION No. 18
(Found on a Stone at Kopbal) This inscription was discovered at Kopbal, on a piece of white stone lying by the side of a tomb known as Khadiralingana gōri' (Khadirlinga's tomb) near the fort. When I visited the place subsequently, the stone was missing and could not be traced." The stone which contained the inscription in full originally, must have been bigger in size. But as may be seen from the contents of the epigraph, it was later broken and more than one of its sides mutilated. Consequently, the record has to be incomplete and fragmentary. The maximum length and breadth of the stone piece measure 29 and 25 inches respectively.
The inscription is engraved in big characters carved deeply into the stone. The script is archaic Kannada of the 9th century A. D. The language is Kannada and the composition is in verse. The record consists of six lines of writing all of which are damaged to a greater or lesser extent. The partially preserved text of the epigraph has retained remnants of two stanzas. One of them is in the Sārdulavikrīḍita metre and the other in its cognate metre Mattēbhavikriḍita. Of the second stanza remnants of only two lines are traceable. It is likely that the epigraph consisted of these two verses only. In that case, it may be inferred that we have lost only two complete lines of the record.
Each line of the inscription on stone appears to have accommodated one entire hemistitch of the verse. As the syllabic contents and the quantity of the two metres represented here are fixed, we can easily find out the precise number and nature (short or long) of the letters that are lost in each line. This has been indicated by introducing suitable signs in the body of the text below.
The epigraph commences with a reference to the illustrious king Nripatunga Vallabha who, we are told, had destroyed all his enemies and was ruling the kingdom. The third and fourth lines of the first verse next speak of a warrior who encountered the enemy in a fight and attained the heaven. The first two lines of the second verse and, as a matter of fact, the whole of it appears to have been devoted to the praise of the great qualities of the hero
1 In my recent visit to the place in 1955 I found the stone again.
