North Indian Inscriptions

SUPPLEMENTARY INSCRIPTIONS

The alphabet is Nāgarī, closely resembling that of the Mōḍī and Māndhātā inscriptions of Jayavarman. The mechanical execution also is as careful as of those. The vovel i is indicated by two loops placed horizontally and subscribed by the sign of the medial u ; the aksharas ch and dh are distinguished from v ; the former by its beginning with a stroke on its loop, as in -chakrē, l. 5, and the latter by a curved horn on its left limb, as in vaidhavya-, l. 8 ; and lastly, the palatal ś has a horizontal stroke in the middle as the e.g., in sithili, l. 5.

The language is Sanskrit and the available portion is all metrical. The verses were all originally numbered, as we notice the numbers 18, 19, 22 and 26, respectively in ll. 5, 6, 8 and 10. None of the verses in the existing fragment is complete. The only point worth noting from the point of view of orthography is that whereas the mātrās of ē and ō are marked above the line, those for ai and au one of the mātrās is a pṛisṭha-mātra.

The inscription seems to be a praśasti, as suggested by its ornate style and the conventional manner of the description. Its immediate object, however, cannot be ascertained, though it appears to record the construction of a temple, as we usually find. That the temple was constructed by a scion of the royal house of the Paramāras of Mālava is known from the expression Nirvāṇa-Nārāyaṇa occurring in its line 9, and we know it to be one of the titles of Naravarman,^[1] the son of Udayāditya. This is also suggested from the name Muñ[ja] at the end of l. 7,^[2] used to denote another illustrious member of the royal house and well known to us from the inscriptions. The preserved portion does not contain any date, but on palaeographical grounds it may be assigned to about the 13th century or a little earlier.

The first five lines of the existing fragment describe a king or kings leading his (their) victorious army to the north up to Ayōdhyā on the Sarayū and up to the Himālayas, in the west up to Dvārakā, and to the south up to the Malaya mountain and father up to Laṁkā.^[3] This description is all conventional and it does not yield any historical information.

All the geographical names occurring in the preserved portion of the inscription are well known.

TEXT^[4]
[Metres^[5] : Lines 2, 5, 7, 8 and 10 Śārdūlavikrīḍita ; l. 3 Śikhariṇī ; ll. 4 and 6 Śragdharā ; l.9 Indravajrā, Upēndravajrā or Upajāti ; and 11, 11-12 Mālinī, Mandākrāntā or Śragrhara].

^[1] See above, No. 36, ll. 12-13.
^[2] See n. 9 in the text below.
^[3 For a similar extravagant assertion, see above, No. 24, v. 17.
^[4] From the original and an inked impression.
5 None of the verses is complete and the metres here are as indicated by the cadence of the aksharas as preserved in each of the lines.
^[6] Of both these aksharas the mātrās above are broken.
^{[7 ]}The reading here is certain but it cannot be grammatically defended.
^[8] Apparently the letter ra is lost before the mātrā.
^[9] The bracketed letter is broken in its latter part but the restoration appears to be certain.