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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
SUPPLEMENTARY INSCRIPTIONS ll. 3-4 is grammatically incorrect, but the sense appears to be that the donation was made by one Chāha who belonged to the Chandrātrēya family, the chief queen Satyabhāmā and the mahārāja-putras Gōpāla and Vitvana, all combined. The record is dated on the Amāvāsyā of Srāvaṇa of the (Vikrama) year 1060, on a solar eclipse. The week-day is not mentioned. The date has been calculated to correspond to 20th July, 1004 A. C. when there was a solar eclipse. The year was Kārttikādi expired. Commencing with the sign for Ōm which is followed by the expression Brahma-śrīḥ, which is indeed a peculiar feature of the record and is generally not found in land-grants, the inscription gives the genealogy of the royal house of the Chandēllas, from Dhaṅga to Vidyādhara, and with the date, it then mentions the donation of the village, as stated above, by the chief queen Satyabhāmā (one of the donors), who is known from it for the first time. She is said to have been the daughter of one Nanna, who cannot be identified for want of details. Then the record states that the gift was announced in the presence of the headman (mahattama) and the village folk (janapadas), who were obviously concerned. We do not know that Vidyādhara in whose time the grant was issued, had two sons of the names of Gōpāla and Vitvana, and hence the expression mahārājaputra has to be taken here to denote feudatories or some royal office holders, or noblemen, in which sense we often find it used in inscriptions.[1] There is nothing definite to show that the gift-village was included in their fief and hence they are mentioned here, or that of the queen.
The proceeds of the village were divided among Brāhmaṇas belonging to different gōtras, śākhās and pravaras, and they are mentioned as hailing from different villages, most of which are called bhaṭṭa-grāmas, probably indicating rent-free localities in the possession of learned Brāhmaṇas. In a number of cases some of these details are dropped, particularly in the latter part of the record, mentioning only the names of the donees, sometimes with those of their fathers. Sometimes two brothers are mentioned to-gether, without any other details. And with each of the Brāhmaṇas is mentioned the share (from one to four) that he was to receive. It has already been noted above that because of the indistinct engraving a number of the names of the Brāhmaṇas, with the details about then, can not definitely be read ; and this difficulty is enhanced by the punctuation-marks so often used in the inscription. It is also not known where we are exactly to add the names of the donees mentioned in the left-side margin and also at the top of the plate. The inscription comes to an end with the sign-manual of Vidyādhara, engraved in two short lines in the lower left margin, as already stated above. Having thus disposed of the formal part of the grant, we now turn to the historical information furnished by it. The so far latest known year of Dhaṅgadēva is 998 A.C., when he issued his Nanyaurā grant ; and it has been usually presumed that he closed his reign not long after this date, since at that time he had already been on the throne for more than a normal period of reign commencing sometime before 953-54 A.C. when he put up the Khajurāhō stone inscription of his father Yaśōvarman.[2] Some scholars, on the other hand, are inclined to hold that this king may have lived at least up to 1008 A.C., which saw the downfall of the Sāhī dynasty.[3] But the present record, which mentions Vidyādhara on the Chandēlla throne in 1004 A.C., undoubtedly shows that Dhaṅga had already died before this year, and also that he was succeeded by his grandson Vidyādhara, and also that the latter’s father, Gaṇḍa, if at all he occupied the throne may evidently be presumed to have done so only for a few months.[4] Thus the present inscription materially adds to our knowledge with reference to the successor of Dhaṅga on the Chandēlla throne. Another important point that may be noted here is that the present inscription solves finally the controversy raging so long with reference to the name of the enemy of the Pratihara
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