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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI No. 110 ; PLATE CII KĀLAÑJAR STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF KĪRTTIVARMAN [Vikrama] Year 1147 THIS inscription was brought to notice, by N. P. Chakravarti, in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for 1935-6, pp. 93 ff. It was edited by Dr. Sant Lal Katare in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXI (1933-34), pp. 163 ff., with text in Nāgarī and a facsimile facing p. 165. From the same facsimile the inscription is edited here. The record is engraved on a slab of stone affixed to a wall of the sanctum of the temple of Nīlakaṇṭha on the well-known fort of Kālañjar in the Bāndā District of Uttar Pradesh.1 It consists of twenty lines of writing which covers a space about 43 cms. broad by 64 cms. high. The last of the lines is about three-fourth of the others, in length. The size of the letters in the first seventeen lines is between 1∙8 and 2 cms., whereas in the remaining lines, which show letters of a slightly bigger size, it is about the double of this size. The inscription is very slovenly engraved and shows a number of cases of subsequent corrections and inscriptions. It has also suffered considerably from the peeling off of the surface of the stone on the proper right side which has wholly or partially broken away one or two aksharas in each of the lines from 6 to 16, the loss being greater in ll. 15-16. Even in the extant part of the inscription some of the letters here and there are mutilated or rubbed out and a long horizontal scratch running over about the three-fourth portion of line 5 makes it difficult to restore the text for a great part thereof.
Besides what is said above, the proper right side of the bottom of the slab contains four lines of writing which occupies a space about 10∙5 cms. high by 9 cms. broad ; and the letters in these lines, which are of about the same size as in the last three lines of the main inscription, range from three to five in each of the lines. This portion of the inscription is wholly corrupt and the reading of it is almost uncertain, as will be shown below. The characters are Nāgarī of the eleventh century A.C., to which the record belongs. They lack in showing uniformity, and in this respect they share the same peculiarity as of the preceding inscription. However, to note the outstanding peculiarities of the letters, we find that k in kavi-, l. 15, shows a sudden curve of the lower end of the vertical so as to form the loop and is altogether different from that employed all through the record. Ṅ has not developed the dot, as in Gaṅgā, l. 1 ; the lingual ḍ is round-backed ; e.g., in maṇḍapa-, l. 5 ; and the conjunct consonants gg and ṇṇ appear as gn and ll, respectively in vargga, l. 6 and -pūrṇṇā, l. 12. Dh is without the horn on its left limb and thus it resembles ch ; see vidadhad = vidhi-, l. 4 ; r is generally represented by a vertical with a horizontal stroke attached to its middle on the left ; e.g., in rakhita-, l. 15, but its lowest extremity is occasionally curved to the right, showing it in a transitional stage, as in rāja-, l. 9. We have at least one clear instance to show that as the latter member of a conjunct consonant this letter appears complete with a slanting stroke attached to the lower end of a long vertical ; see gra in l. 19. The language of the record is Sanskrit ; and with the exception of the introductory Ōṁ namaḥ Śivāya and the last five lines which are in prose, it is all in verse. The stanzas are not numbered, but each of them has the letter tha engraved at the end to show its completion.2 A mistake in versification occurs in the very first stanza, to which attention has been drawn in n, appended to the text below. The orthography calls for only a few remarks, viz., (1) the use of the sign for v to denote b as well, as in –vōdha in l. 3 ; (2) the occasional use of the dental for the palatal sibilant ; cf. ______________________________ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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