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INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI
BAMHNI SATI STONE INSCRIPTION
No. 152 ; PLATE CXXXIX
BAMHNĪ SATĪ STONE INSCRIPTION
[ Vikrama ] Year 1365
THIS inscription was first brought to notice in 1923-24, by Rai Bahadur Hiralal in his
edition of the Mahōbā grant of the Chandēlla king Paramardin, which was published in
the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XVI, pp. 9 ff. He published a rough transcript of the text
of the record in a foot-note on p. 10 of it, and subsequently, also noticed its contents, in brief,
in his Inscriptions in the Central Provinces and Berar.10 The record is edited here for the first
time from inked impressions kindly supplied to me, at my request, by the Superintending
Archaeologist, Central Circle, Bhopal, who got them prepared recently by his technical assistant.
The inscription is incised on a slab discovered in the village Bamhnī situated about 35 kms.
north-northwest of Haṭṭā, the headquarters of a tehsīl in the Damōh District of Madhya Pradesh.11 ______________________
1 Hiralal is perhaps right in proposing the omission of the prefix pra. The text is corrupt here. The
name that follows was read by him as Saṭhēla, but the second letter thereof looks as resembling hi, the upper curve of the mātrā being not marked as in many other cases.
2 Hiralal suggests the addition of ubhādhyāṁ here and it may be adopted.
3 Seven aksharas are illegible here. Hiralal read the last three as (Sanskrit), but the traces show
them to be (Sanskrit):.
4 The reading is only tentative. The second, fourth, sixth and eighth aksharas of this line cannot be
clearly made out and possibly some villages marking the boundaries are mentioned here.
5 The repetition of iti is unnecessary here. The vowel i is shown here by two horizontal strokes.
6 As to be read from the traces left.
7 The vertical strokes are probably hidden below the strap fastened to the end of the plate.
8 Both the bracketed letters are highly corroded.
9 One akshara appears to have been at first engraved at the end of the line and then scratched off.
Consequently the writer’s name is not completely known.
10 Second edn., p. 57. It is also stated here that the inscription is also noticed or referred to in the Proceedings of the 4th Oriental Conference held at Allahabad, Vol. I ; but I was unable to find this
reference in this Vol. Similarly, I failed to find the record edited in the Ep. Ind., Vol. XIX, p. 30,
as stated by Dr. S. K. Mitra in his Early Rulers of Khajurāhō (1958), p. 239, No. 64.
11 Shri L. P. Jain, Tehsildar at Haṭṭā, informs me that the village Bamhnī is about 10 kms. by country
track, either from Sāgonī or from Ghaṭērā, both stations on the Bīnā-Katnī line of the Central Railway. It is interesting to note here that the place is about 15 kms. south of Dāhī and almost double
the distance due east of Sēmrā, the find-place of the other two Chandēlla grants.
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