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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
SUPPLEMENTARY INSCRIPTIONS lished by the late K. K. Lele, in the Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute, Vol. XI (1929), pp. 49-53, without a lithograph. The present whereabouts of the stone could not now be traced ; and as even an impression of the record is also not now forthcoming, there is no alternative before me except to reproduce the text given by Lele in his article and add to it my own notes. The record is said to have been incised on an oblong plain slab which is broken at the top and also on portions of both the vertical sides. The correct estimate of the broken portion cannot be made, and the record has also suffered considerably. As stated by Lele, “some of the letters in the middle portion are much worn, precluding the possibility of deciphering the inscription completely”. The existing portion contained seventeen lines of writing, which are all fragmentary. The letters are well formed and carefully incised. The height of the individual letters is not recorded. The script is Nāgarī of the 12-13th century A.C. The language is Sanskrit. The extant portion of the inscription is all metrical ; and except for the last three verses, the first of which is in Mālinī and the other two in the Rathōddhatā metre, all the rest of the verses are in the Śardūlavikrīḍita metre, composed in the artistic kāvya style. They are not numbered but each of them has a double daṇḍa at the end, and the halves are separated by a sigle daṇḍa. The orthography shows the usual peculiarities of the occasional reduplication of a consonant after r, the substitution or b for v and of s for ś, and finally, the use of the sign of anusvāra to denote the final m, except in a few instances like arṇavām-vana-, l. 6. The word ujjvala in l. 7 is wrongly spelt as ujvala and nishphala has the sign of visarga instead of sh in the same line. Sandhi is not performed in mē-api- in l. 14.
The earlier portion of the inscription that was available (vv. 1-8) gives a poetic description of God Vishṇu in his different incarnations and thus it is of no historical interest. Verses 10 ff. eulogise the same deity in his Kṛishṇa incarnation, and is equally devoid of historical value. The concluding part of the record (ll. 16-17, vv. 18-19) informs us that “observing that his material body was frail and mortal, Bilhaṇa composed this poem of (describing) the eternal glory of the god, and Subhaṭavarman’s son, Vindhyavarman, highly respected the poet and donated two gardens (vāṭikās),” presumably for the maintenance of the deity installed by the latter in a temple, about which our inscription has nothing to say. It is not known if the construction of the temple and the installation of the deity therein were mentioned in the portion that is now lost. From the three preceding inscriptions we know that Bilhaṇa held the post of the Minister of Peace and War under Arjunavarman and Dēvapāla ;[1] and the present inscription adds to our knowledge that he was on this post during the reign of Arjunavarman’s father, Vindhyavarman, also. It also tells us that this officer was highly devoted to Vishṇu ; and, as Lele has rightly pointed out in his article referred to above, Maṇḍapa-durga, where the inscription was discovered, also appears to have been a great seal of learning at that time. No geographical name figures in the extant portion of the inscription. ____________________ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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