North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

pravaraya, both in l. 13. The usual form of r appears as a vertical with a horizontal stroke attached to its left in the middle, as in chatur-, l. 9 and –rātma-, l. 12, but its slightly varying forms are also to be seen in –māhēsvara, Kālañjara and –parama-, all in l. 4. Wrong strokes of the chisel give altogether different forms to this letter at several places, e.g., in –śirō-, l. 1. virōdhi-, l. 2 and ¬-vārē, l. 11. There are several examples of wrong and careless engraving throughout the record, e.g., in –ktyā- in l. 2 is incised as ttshā, pra- in l. 13, as da, bhū- in l. 19, as kṛi, l. 19 and -sti, l. 14, as sri.

The language of the inscription is Sanskrit ; and except for the initial verse as to be found to begin a Chandēlla grant and another at the end, it is all in prose. With respect to orthography, we may note that (1) the letter b is always denoted by the sign for v, as in –vādhā, l. 17 (2) the dental sibilant is put for the palatal in many cases, e.g., in visvēsvara-, l. 1, though ś is written in –śirō- which immediately follows ; (3) a consonant following r is doubled as in –sarvva-, l. 16 ; (4) the sign of avagraha is employed only once in l. 7, to denote the merging of a into ō, though there are several other cases of this type ; (5) the word ujjvala, in l. 1, is wrongly spelt with a single j ; and local influence is to be seen in the spellings of punya, ll. 11-12 and tru for tri in l. 13 ; it is also to be found in words like vāii, l. 7, daṁḍaku, l. 8 and vṛikshu and valmīkū l. 9, for which Kielhorn has invited attention to Hemachandra’s Prakrit Grammar, IV 331.

The inscription begins with the oft-quoted verse glorifying the family of the Chandrātrēya (Chandēlla) kings, and after mentioning the names of their earliest ancestors Jayaśakti and Vijayaśakti, it proceeds to give the ancestry of the donor beginning from the Paramabhaṭṭāraka- Mahārājādhirāja-Paramēśvara, the illustrious Kīrttivarman, his successor the P.M.P. Pṛithvīvarman and his successor the P.M.P. Madanavarman, who was a devout worshipper of Mahēśvara (Śiva) and the supreme lord of Kālañjara (ll. 2-5). This account is followed by the formal portion of the document (ll. 5-15), the object of which is to record the donation of a plot of land by Madanavarman, in favour of a Brāhmaṇa whose name was Rābhala (or Rāsala ?),^[1] who was the son of Jāṭa, the grandson of Sānhi (Sātki?) and the great-grandson of Vāpana (Vāmana?). His gōtra was Bhāradvāja, and his pravaras were Bhāradvāja, Āṅgirasa and Bārhaspatya. The donated land existed in the village Bamharḍā in the Sūḍali vishaya and its dimensions were as measured (probably to be determined later on) by ten ploughs, i.e., as much as could be ploughed in a day by ten pairs of oxen, as mentioned both in figures and words, and also by the total quantity of 7½ droṇas of seed sown.^[2] The boundaries of the plot are stated to be as follows: in the eastern direction the boundary-mark of the village Raṇasuā ; in the southern direction the village Kamaṇauḍā ; in the western direction an ant-hill near

madhūka tree ; and on the north the boundary-mark of the village Vijauli.

The king donated the above-mentioned plot of land after performing all the necessary preliminaries, and he also announced the gift in the presence of all assembled in the village. The conditions of the grant are stated in ll. 15-17, according to which, the donee was entitled to enjoy, plough, cause to be ploughed, give away, mortgage or sell the plot, with the ways from it and to it, with all its sap-trees (āsava), sugar-cane, cotton, safflowers, hemp, mango, madhūka (madhuca latifolia) and other trees, with the treasure in its forests and mines, and together with the other things contained within its boundaries and with the income from within and without.^[3] With a request to future rulers to preserve the gift and quoting a well-known verse to the effect (ll. 18-19), the record concludes, stating that it was written by the writer of legal documents (dharma-lēkhin) Sūḍha and engraved by the skilful Ūlhaṇa. As we shall presently see, they are respectively the writer and the engraver of the following grant also.

The date of the grant is expressed both in words and figures in ll.10-11. It is Monday, the full-moon day of the month of Māgha, (Vikrama) Saṁvat 1190, which as calculated by
______________

^[3] The reading of this and some other names that follow is uncertain, as shown below in the text.
^[4] The reading here is: hala 10 satka-bhūmir=yatra vāügē. While editing a grant of Madanavarman’s grandson Paramardin, A. Venis takes vāügē to be the same as the Prākrit vaugē, from the Sanskrit vāpa-gatyā, and adds that ‘it describes the grain as sown broadcast, i.e., not as sown first in seed and beds and then transplanted’ (Ep. Ind., Vol. X, p. 47). While publishing Venis’ article the editor quotes some instances to show that land was often measured also by the amount of seed required to sow it; but we have a number of similar instances in the Paramāra epigraphs edited above, as in No. 13, l. 13; No. 45, l. 27; and also in C. I. I., Vol. IV, page 191. I. 32 and n. Also see No. 131. l. 8, below
^[5] This account is based on Kielhorn’s translation. The last expression means, as we have seen in the text below also, ‘with internal and external taxes’, i.e., on custom and excise duties.