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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI
No. 122 ; No. PLATE THIS inscription is incised on the pedestal of a Jaina statue which is exhibited in the Horniman Museum. It was published by Kielhorn, with a reproduction of the figure, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, for 1898, pp. 101 f., and Plate. The image is of Nēminātha, the twenty-second Tīrthaṅkara, as can be recognised from the cognisance conchshell, carved on its breast and also on the pedestal ; and the total height is reported to be equal to 91.44 cms., and the width at the base, to 71.12 cms. The inscription is edited here from its facsimile in the photograph accompanying Kielhornâs article. The record consists of three lines, the first of which is unusually larger than the other two. It is well preserved. The characters are Nāgarī of the twelfth century, to which the record belongs. The language is Sanskrit, which is grammatically incorrect ; and the record is in prose. With reference to orthography, we may note the use of the dental sibilant for the palatal, e.g., in Vaisākha, and also that of the consonant m for the anusvāra in Saṁvat, both in l. 1.
The object of the inscription is to record the installation of the image, on the pedestal of which it is incised, by the Śrēshṭhin Māhula[1] of the Grahapati lineage, and his homage to the deity by him, along with some of the members of his family. The date, as mentioned in numerical figures, at the beginning, is Thursday, the 5th of the dark half of Vaiśākha of Saṁvat 1208. As calculated by Kielhorn, it corresponds, for the Kārttikādi Vikrama year, expired, and the pūrṇimāṇta Vaiśākha, to Thursday, the 27th March, 1152 A.C., when the 5th tithi of the dark half ended about 5 h. 57 m. after mean sunrise.[2] The date is quite regular. The original find-spot of the image is unknown, nor is any king named therein. However, a guess in this respect may be hazarded here. The family known as Grahapati flourished at Khajurāhō, as we are informed by one of the following inscriptions (No. 124) which bears the date V. 1215, only seven years later than that of the present inscription ; and, as noted by Kielhorn, the names figuring in it are similar to those of the Sēmrā grant of Paramardin,[3] showing a very strong possibility that the image under reference was originally found in the Vindhya region, and very probably somewhere in the vicinity of Khajurāhō itself, from where it may have sailed to London, where Horniman purchased it in 1895, as Kielhorn was informed by Quick, the then curator of that Museum.
The family referred to in the inscription belonged to Maḍilapura. In the text given by
him, Kielhorn[4] corrected this name to Maṇḍilapura ; but this correction is not free from doubt
for there is also a possibility that the consonant of the second akshara may have been intended
to be h, its left-hand curve being either altogether omitted or engraved so lightly that it could
not come out in the photograph.[5] If this be the case, the reading of the name would by west
Mahilapura, which appears to be identical with Mahēvā, a village about 10 kms, north by west
of Chhatarpur and in the very close proximity of Khajurāhō itself, which may have been the
original provenance of the statue. Following this line of thought, we may take the image to
have been engraved during the reign of the Chandēlla king Madanavarman who was on the
throne from 1129 to 1163 A.C.
[1] From the construction it is not clear whether this name is given here only to show the genealogy, or
that the person denoted by it was also one of the participaents for setting the image. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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