________________
ON THE TEXT
OF A verse in the Bhitari Stone Pillar Inscription of Skandagupta
Satyavrat
Tlie controversy sparked off by Verse Seven of The Bhitari Stone Pillai Inscuption of the Gupta monarchi, Skandagupta, on restoration of possibly the correct text of its last quarter, has lately assumed interesting, though somewhat dogmatic overtones, with the jumping of some of the stalwarts into the fray. V. C. Pandey is disposed to follow with faithful tenacity J. F. Fleet, who, stiay efforts not withstanding, is credited with the first cohcrcit reading and translation of the line that run as follows : vã. TFH* 293171 919909179ath : "Whom the bards raise to distinction with (their) songs and praises"i Prof. J. N. Agrawal too has been an equally a dent champion of Fleet's reading, though, on his own adınıssion, he had often felt sceptical of the precise import of the text. It is a measure of the intensity of his misgivings about the vecacity of the text, that while teaching us the inscription, way back in 1937, he had retained the reading, as made out by Fleet but had translated it almost in the manner, he lias done recently. It is a pointer to the fact that while he had hit upon the intended sense, loug back, he was unsure, to say the least, of the correct reading of the live.
Since some momentous issues pertaining to the origin and character of Skandagupti are involved in the text of the line and interpretation thercof it mcrits an honest and unbiased evaluation. Dr. Pandey, while cspousing Hect's reading, sights many phantoms in the verse. Thus, it is to his ingenuity that we owe the breathtaking suggestion that Skandgupta had the 'Aryastatus' (aryata) bestowed upon him by petty bards, implying thereby that he, for svoth, was not an Arya. Skandagupta's non-Aryan. hood, Dr. Pandey further avers, emanated from the low origin of his mother, who, he would have us belive, was of Savaravarna' and as such not a Mahadevi. However, he stops short of denigrating her as a concubine, though that would have formed the most fitting finale to his tortured interpretation of the verse.4 While there is nothing in the Gupta history, as we know it, to uphold the supposed 'low origin of Skandagupta's mother or to prove that she was not the chief queen of Kumaragupta, it would he naive to believe that Skanda gupta was absol
