Kurmastakadvyam

Author(s): Bhojdev Maharaj
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Introduction
The two Prakrit Satakas on Kūrma, the Tortoise who supports the Earth, are attributed to the illustrious Paramāra King Bhojadeva of Mālavadesa in central India (c. AD 1000-55). The two Śatakas, each actually having 109 stanzas and composed in the Āryā metre, are inscribed on a stone slab at Dhārā (Dhar), Bhoja's capital town. It was in 1903 that K. K. Lele, Superintendent of Education at Dhar, discovered the stone slab bearing the inscribed poems, from among the ruins of a monument that was originally Bhoja-śälā, a school of learning, and brought it to the notice of Prof. E. Hultzsch, the government epigraphist. Prof. R. Pischel, who has edited the inscription in the Epigraphia Indica, Volume VIII, tells us that it consists of 83 lines and is engraved with great care. The language of the poems is Māhārāstrī Prakrit.
The poems were not translated into English to this date and I am happy to say that on my request, Dr. V. M. Kulkarni, eminent authority on Prakrit and Sanskrit studies, undertook their translation and prepared a Select Glossary. He desired that I write an Introduction to this book, a request with which I readily comply with because of my own interest in the kūrma symbolism in Indian art.
These Šatakas, as Pischel says, are of doubtful poetical value, but are historically important for two reasons. First, they are among the rare extant examples of inscribed poetry in India. The other known examples, also inscribed at Dhārā, are Khadga Sataka, Kodandakāvya, attributed to Bhojadeva?, and the play Pārijātamañjari composed by a preceptor of the Paramāra King Arjunavarman in about AD 1213.3 Secondly, the Satakas are significant from the viewpoint of kūrma symbolism. They represent the full-blown development of the idea - hitherto found only in stray, single verses - of the Tortoise (rather than the Boar or Serpent) as the support of the earth; and, analogically, of the king as the support of the earth over which he ruled. This concept must have fascinated and flattered Mahārājā Bhoja enough to have the two poems inscribed on stone.