North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

the chief Superintendent of the treasury and a counsellor of the illustrious king Bhōjavarman (vv. 26-29).

The next four verses are devoted to eulogise Subhaṭa, but the description is all conventional. Verse 31, which is now partially lost, states that ‘considering the world to be a resort of three kinds of pain, and wealth to be as unsteady as the motion of a swing, and also that it is religious merit which alone accompanies a man when he enters another body, and that fickle is the life of man’, he ordered a temple to be built.

The inscription is silent as to the place where the temple referred to here was built ; but there is no doubt that it was Ajayagaḍh itself where the inscribed stone was discovered. That the temple was dedicated to Kēdāra is evident from the opening stanza and the verse following it, as we have already seen.

The next verse (32), where we naturally expect something more about the temple, leaves the purpose in hand and states that Subhaṭa had three sons, two of whom were Kīrtirāja and Kumāra, and the name of the third was Harirāja, as I see in the next line which is shorter and in smaller letters and which looks more like a continuation. This line cannot be completely deciphered, as stated above, and in what connection these three sons of Subhaṭa are mentioned is also not known. It is however possible that this portion, which may have said something more about the temple and may also have furnished the names of the poet and the scribe, was perhaps continued on another slab which is not forthcoming, as we have already remarked.

The Chandēlla kings mentioned in the present inscription without speaking about their mutual relationship, are Gaṇḍa, who is eulogised in v. 6, (his great grandson) Kīrtivarman in v. 9, (his seventh descendent) Paramardin in v. 10, (his son) Trailōkyavarman grandson) Kīrtivarman in (his grandson) Bhōjavarman in v. 29. The description, though writing in an artistic style, is merely conventional and provides no historical information which is new, except in the case of the wise Vāsē or Vāsēka, who is stated to have killed in a battle the irresistible Bhōjūka, as seen above, and about his younger brother Ānanda who was the governor of the fort and subjugated the wild tribes (v. 22).

As for the localities mentioned in the presents inscription, Ṭakkārikā the original home of the Vāstavya family of the kāyasthas (v. 2) cannot be definitely located as there are several places mentioned by this name, as seen already.¹ However, in view of its being in the neighbourhood of the place of the inscription, it may probably be the same as situated either in Bihār, near Gayā, or in the modern Uttar Pradesh.² Jayadurga (vv. 17 and 24) is evidently the fort of Ajaygaḍh in the Pannā District of Madhya Pradesh, where the stone was discovered, while Kālañjara (v. 11) has already been shown to be the place of that name in the Bāndā District of Uttar Pradesh. The village Dagauḍā (v. 7) is perhaps identical with Digaurā, as already remarked, and Pita-śaila is the same as the hills known as Pītadri or Pēṭ hills in the Ṭīkamgaḍh District of Madhya Pradesh.³ The rest of the places, viz., Pipalāhikā (v. 9) and Varbhavari (v. 17) cannot be identified. The first of these names occurs also in No. 112 above, in its last verse, and the second is probably the same as Vaḍavāri, mentioned in No. 126, l. 8.

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¹ See above, No. 51 (p. 179).
² Ibid. It may also be noted that the Kaḷas-Budrukh grant of Bhillama III of the Yādava house mentions this place as situated in Madhyadēśa (Ind. Ant., Vol. XVII, p. 121) which roughly corresponds to the modern Uttar Pradesh.
³ See above, No. 112.