North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

No. 156 ; PLATE CXXXXIII

GWĀLIOR STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF MAHĪPLĀA

[ Vikrama ] Year 1161

THIS inscription is incised on a long slab of yellow sand-stone discovered by General. Alexander Cunningham in the fortress of Gwālior, which is now the chief city of a district in Madhya Pradesh, and was brought to notice by him in his Archaeological Survey of India Reports, Volume II (1862-1865), p. 354. The record was also transcribed and translated by Rajendralal Mitra in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Volume XXXI (1862), pp. 418 ff., but his article is not illustrated. His transcript too is inaccurate in a number of places, particularly in the historical portion thereof, as rightly pointed out by E. Hultzsch, who subsequently edited the record in the Indian Antiquary, Volume XV (1886), pp. 201 ff. Hultzsch succeeded in recognising in it three names of the royal personages and also in correcting the genealogy given by Mitra ; but his article too, which contains his reading of the text, is not accompanied by a facsimile, and he has not given some other details, e.g., the dimensions of the writing, language and orthography, etc. The inscription is edited here from an excellent inked impression kindly prepared and supplied to me, at my request, by the Director of the Provincial Museum, Lucknow, where the stone is now preserved.

The writing consists of nine lines, and originally it covered a space about 154 cms. broad by 25 cms. high. The last of the lines is about 2 cms. longer than the others, to accommodate two more letters completing the inscription. But the record is fragmentary, as a part of the stone from top to bottom on the proper right side and containing about twenty aksharas at the commencement of each of the lines, is broken and lost, as can be made out by the number of verses in the inscription. A small portion of the upper proper right corner and the top portion covering a major part of the first line have also broken away. The extant portion, however, is
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¹ Kielhorn was somewhat doubtful about the reading of the bracketed aksharas, but they are clear enough on the stone, though somewhat rubbed.