North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

No. 140; PLATE CXXVII

KĀLAÑJAR STONE INSCRIPTION OF PARAMARDIDĒVA

[Vikrama] Year 1258

THIS inscription was discovered, in 1848, by Lieut. F. Maisey, at Kālañjar in the Narainī tehsīl of the Bāndā District of Uttar Pradesh, and he published a transcript of it with a translation of some of the concluding lines, but without a facsimile, in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society, Vol. XVII (1848-50), pp. 313 ff. Maisey found the record incised “on a large black stone slab leaning against a pillar opposite the entrance of the Cave” adjoining to the temple of Nīlakaṇṭha at that place.⁵ The place was subsequently visited by Alexander cunningham, who found the inscribed slab inside the temple, and who, noticing the record briefly, corrected Maisey’s reading of the date in his Archaeological Survey of India Reports, Vol. XXI (1883- 85), pp. 37-38, but without the facsimile. The transcript prepared by Maisey also suffers from inaccuracies; he neither marked it line by line nor did show the omission of letters that were illegible to him, and what is more is that he continued in the same lines, without even showing the breaks, whatever was legible. No scholar has thereafter attempted to give a correct transcript of the inscription, since, besides the deteriorating condition of the record, a great part of it consists of a eulogistic address to Śiva and Pārvatī, and thus it is of much less historical interest. The inscription is edited here from a fresh impression kindly supplied to me, at my request, by the Chief Epigraphist, Archaeological Survey of India.⁶

The record is incised on a counterstruck surface and contains 32 lines of writing, besides a sentence paying homage to Nīlakaṇṭha, which was later on engraved on the left of the upper border thereof. The writing covers a space 81 cms. broad by 66 cms. high. It is in a very bad state of preservation, for a greater part of it and particularly the middle has become obliterated, as Maisey himself had noted in the last century, was “used at one time to macerate tobacco on
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¹ The bracketed aksharas are engraved as ddhau sa-,
² Some traces with two upright strokes on either side here, and also in l. 40, show that either the aksharas chha or some flowery design was
used to mark the end of the stanza. ³ The horizontal stroke of va is broken or not fully engraved, marking the letter appear as da.
⁴ Of both these letters only traces are left now.
⁵ For Maisey’s description of Kālañjar and its antiquities, see J. A. S. B., Vol. XVII, pp. 171 ff. He wrongly read the date as 1298, instead
of 1258.
⁶ Most of the letters have not clearly come out on this impression, and from l. 19th to the end, it fails to give the actual reading, though
it has enabled me to prepare a somewhat improved version.