North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

No. 113 ; PLATE CV

FRAGMENTARY MAHŌBĀ INSCRIPTION ENDING WITH THE NAME OF KĪRTTIVARMAN

(Date lost ?)

THIS inscription was discovered by General Cunningham in 1865, at Mahōbā,¹⁰ the ancient Mahōtsavanagara and the chief town of a Parganā of the same name in the Hamīrpur District of Uttar Pradesh. The place lies 86 kilometres to the south of Hamīrpur and 55 kilometres to the north of Khajurāhō, and is connected with both these places by metalled roads and is also a railway station on the Jhānsī-Mānikpur branch of the Central Railway. Cunningham found the stone let into the wall of a Dargāh known as of Pīr Muhammad Shāh ; but some time later it found its way to the Museum at Allahabad, where Cunningham saw it again in 1872, and from an impression thereof taken by him there, he published a short account of it in his Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India for 1883-1884, Volume XXI, p. 71, and facsimile (Plate xxi). In 1885 a transcript of the inscription with a short abstract thereof in German was published in Zeitschrift d. Deutsch. Morg. Ges, Volume XL, p. 47, by E. Hultzsch, who also edited it almost about the same time in the Epigraphia Indica, Volume I (1888), pp. 217 ff. It is edited here from the original and a fresh impression kindly supplied by the Director of the Provincial Museum, Lucknow, where the stone is now exhibited.

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¹ is probably dropped by the writer in view of the preceding mātrā and not knowing that the sandhi would be wrong since the visarga has already been dropped here.
² The mātrā of ō is partly visible above this letter.
³ There is a kāka-pada sign at the end of this line.
⁴ cf. in Raghuvaṁśa, Canto II, v. 47.
⁵ Katare read . But what he takes to be a pṛishṭha-mātrā is in fact intended to be a daṇḍa which is very closely engraved before this syllable.
⁶ A redundant stroke makes this letter appear as . cf. Pīta-śaila-vishayēshu, below, in No. 150, v. 9, and Pita-parvata-talē, in C. I. I.,
Vol. IV. p. 280, and text, v. 10. In the former, it is called a vishaya.
⁷ The reading of is doubtful, as a horizontal stroke appears between the two limbs of this letter.
⁸ This means either (1) authority over the main gate of the fort or the supreme authority over (all the) gates of the fort.
⁹ Dr. Katare observes that the inscription ends abruptly and also that the scribe apparently left out the last two letters which have to be
conjecturally restored. But what appears to me is that these two letters may have been scribed just below the last two letters of the
line, since there appears an anusvāra and a horizontal stroke in the Pl.
¹⁰ Mahōbā is one of the well-known strongholds of the Chandēlla rulers; it is situated in Long, 79º.53’ E.; Lat. 25º, 18’ N. The place and its
antiquities are described by Cunningham in A. S. I., A. R., Vol. XXI. pp. 71 ff. For the discovery of the inscription, see ibid., Vol. II, p. 447.