North Indian Inscriptions

SUPPLEMENTARY INSCRIPTIONS

TEXT^[1]

No. 184 ; PLATE CXLIX
A FRAGMENTARY STONE INSCRIPTION FROM UJJAIN
(Date lost ?)

THE stone bearing this inscription was found some forty years ago by Pt. Sūrya Nārāyaṇa Vyās, in the ruins near the temple of Mahākāla at Ujjain the well-known ancient place which is now the headquarters of a district of the same name in Madhya Pradesh. The contents of the record were briefly noticed by the late M.B. Garde in the Annual Report of the Archaeology Department of the former Gwālior State for V.S. 1992 (1935-36 A.C.), p. 15, and it was also published in the Nāgarī-prachāriṇī-Patrikā (a Hindi Monthly), Vol. XIX, pp. 87-89, with a lithograph. The stone is now kept in the University Museum at Ujjain. The inscription is edited here from the original stone which I inspected in my visit to the place, and from an impression kindly supplied to me by Shri V. S. Wakankar, the Curator of the Museum.

The inscription is only a loose fragment of apparently a very large inscription incised on a smooth black stone. The piece is almost triangular in shape, with one of its sides, on the left, showing its maximum height to be 18.5 cms. and another side, that at the top, showing the total length of 29.5 cms. The third of the sides, which begins at the right corner at the top and gradually decreases the number of letters as it comes down to the bottom on the left, measures 30 cms. The inscription contains fourteen imperfect lines, the first of which shows only four complete letters with the lower parts of the others. The number of the aksharas gradually decreases from 25 in the second to 4 in the penultimate line, and the last line shows only the upper parts of two letters. We have no means to ascertain the actual size of the original inscription. The existing portion is in a perfect state of preservation, and the average size of the aksharas is about 1 cm.

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^[1] From the original stone.
^[2] The unit figure is mutilated but its reading is certain. As for the decimal figure, the curve at its lowest extremity is damaged and partly disappeared, making it appear also as 5. But my close and minute examination shows it to be 4, as taken here, which is also consistent with the period assigned to Hariśchandra, mentioned in the inscription.
^[3] The reading of both the names is uncertain.
^[4] Some three aksharas are lost at the beginning of this line, and in the next one, the letters are partly imbedded below.
^[5] The inscription appears to be incomplete and it is not known as to how many lines are below the surface.