North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

BHĀRAT KALĀ BHAVAN COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF PARAMARDIDĒVA

sionally placing a daṇḍa as a punctuation mark so close to the preceding or the following letter, as to be confounded with the sign of a mātrā. Besides these, we also find a developed tendency to use the pṛishṭha-mātrā and the anusvāra, though the use of the para-savarṇa too is often resorted to, sometimes wrongly, as in samvidita-, l. 7. The verb gṛihṇāti is wrongly spelt with the dental n ; the influence of the local pronunciation is reflected in proper names, e.g., in Padumadhara, l. 12 ; and lastly, as in the other grants of the king, a daṇḍa is put to indicate that the syllable preceding it is an abbreviated form, as is the one after ṭha and another after paṁ, both in l. 12, to denote respectively Ṭhakkura and Puṁḍita, i.e., Paṇḍit.

The inscription refers itself to the Chandēlla king Paramardin of Kālañjara, and its object is to record the gift of the village of the name of Chachōḍā¹ which was then included in the territorial division of Duduhī, by the king Paramardin himself, when he was encamped at Sallakshaṇa-Vilāsapura, on a date which is expressed both in words and numerical figures. It is Tuesday, the fourth day of the dark half of Phālguna of the (Vikrama) year 1239, which, taking the year to be Chaitrādi, expired, corresponds to 23rd of February, 1182 A.C.²

To summarise the contents of the record, it begins with the auspicious symbol for Siddham and is followed by the expression Svasti, which, in its turn, is followed by a verse in the Anushṭubh metre which we generally find at the beginning of the grants of the house. Thereafter, the record mentions the Paramabhaṭṭāraka, Mahārājādhirāja and Paramēśvara, the glorious Paramardin, who was a great devotee of Mahēśvara and the supreme lord of Kālañjara, and who is stated to have meditated on the feet of the P.M.P. the illustrious Madanavarman, who, in his turn, meditated on the feet of the P.M.P., the illustrious Pṛithvīvarman. This portion has been copied from the earlier grants of the king and thus it affords no new historical material. Here it is worth noting that Paramardin’s father Yaśōvarman’s name does not figure in the genealogy, for the latter had either predeceased his father Madanavarman, or may have ruled only for a short time, as we have seen above. The formal portion of the charter begins in l. 6 ; it goes on to convey the king’s order to the Brāhmaṇas and all the other people who had assembled at the village of Chachōḍā when he had encamped at Sallakshaṇa-Vilāsapura. The grant was made in favour of a Brāhmaṇa- Paṁ (i.e., Paṇḍita) Padumadhara-śarman, who belonged to the Kautsa gōtra and the Vājasanēyī śākhā with the three pravaras ─ Āṅgirasa, Ambarīsha and Yauvanāśva, and who was the son of Ṭha, i.e., Ṭhakkura, Dhāīṁ, grandson of Śrīpāla and the great-grandson of Ṭha- i.e., Ṭhakkura Sahāraṇa and hailed from Pāṭalīputra.¹ Lines 13-17 describe the usual conditions of the grant, stating that the donee and his descendants should enjoy the gift of the village with the objects in its limits and without any obstruction from any quarter, and also that it may be continued by kings in future. Then, as usual, follow three of the benedictory and imprecatory verses and the sign-manual of the king Paramardidēva, in ll. 17-20. And with the statement that the inscription was written by the dharmalēkhin (writer of legal documents) Ṭhakkura Vishṇuka, and engraved by Pālhaṇa,⁴ the record comes to a close.

As for the localities mentioned in the grant, Kālañjara (l. 4) is, of course, the renowned fort of the name, as we have often seen ; and Duḍuhī or Duduhī (l. 6) has been correctly identified by Sircar with the modern Dudāhī in the Lalitpur sub-division of the Jhānsī District. Chachōḍā (l. 6), the gift-village, seems to be identical with the modern Chāchōḍā or Chachōrā in the Gunā District of Madhya Pradesh. This place is about 100 miles or 160 kms. west-southwest of Dudāhī and about 120 kms. north-west of Vidishā ; and we know that the Vidishā-Dudāhī region was then included in the Chandēlla kingdom. Vilāsapura (l. 8) has already been identified with Pachhār,⁵ the find-spot of another grant of Paramardin, lying about 20 kms, north-east of Jhānsī. Here, however, the name Sallakshaṇa is added to it, and it was so known probably because after the name of Sallakshaṇa, the elder brother of Pṛithvīvarman, who was the great-grandfather of
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¹ Ibid.
² See Ep. Ind., Vol. XXXII, p. 123.
³ This adjective is applied to the donee alone and hence the meaning is that he and not his family, as Sircar observed, hailed from Pāṭaliputra. He is obviously a nephew of the donee in No. 119, as known from his ancestry.
⁴ As already seen above, this person also engraved some other charters.
⁵ Above, No. 131.