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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
SUPPLEMENTARY INSCRIPTIONS
No. 181 ; PLATE CXLVI
THIS inscription is incised on a pillar standing on the left side just above the stairs leading to the eastern entrance of the celebrated Śiva temple, (and on the right side of the same slab which bears inscription No. 19, edited above) at Udaipur in the Bāsōdā tehsīl of the Vidishā District of Madhya Pradesh. It was noticed in the Annual Administration Report of the Department of Archaeology of the former Gwālior State, for V.S. 1974, No. 111; but the report is now not available.[4] The inscription is edited here from the original stone which I examined in situ, in my visit to the place on 10-3-1973. The inscription consists of seven lines which are in a fair state of preservation, except two aksharas which are lost at the end of l. 6. The writing covers a space 32.5 cms. broad by 24.5 cms. high and the height of the individual letters is about 4 cms. The script is Nāgarī. The language is Sanskrit. The inscription does not bear a date ; but the palaeography and the peculiarities of writing and engraving the letters suggest it to have been almost of the same time as No. 19, above, which is inscribed by its side, just to its left. The purpose of the record is to state that Udayāditya named the place as Udayapura and also excavated a tank there. The record was engraved by a mason whose name is lost and who was a brother of the mason Madhusudana. The inscription consists of two verses in the Anushṭubha metre in the beginning, and following them, a portion in prose. Nothing special is worth noticing by way of orthography. The first of the verses state that the king Udayāditya, whose family is not named but who can be no other than the well-known Paramāra king, excavated a tank in the best of the towns which he also named after himself ; and the second verse is devoted only to eulogise him. In the prose portion that follows, we learn that the stanzas were engraved by a mason whose name is lost[5] but who was a brother of Madhusūdana, as already seen above. The record ends with the customary words meaning auspicious, great fortune. On a separate slab of stone of the same type and just below the inscription No. 19, mentioned above, is engraved another stanza in two lines, which appear to be in continuation of the _______________ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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