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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
INCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF TRIPURI No. 47; THIS inscription was brought to public notice by General Cunningham’s Assistant Mr. J. D. Beglar who found a rubbing of it in the Asiatic Society’s collection. He called attention to its date1 in connection with the description of the ruins at Makundpur, a village about nine miles south by west of Rewa, in the State of Vindhya Pradesh. He could not, however, find the inscription when he visited the place in 1874-75. The record was next twice referred to by Dr. Kielhorn2 who, drawing attention to its date, pointed out the desirability of examining it. Its impressions were not, however, accessible to him, when he wrote his exhaustive articles on the epoch of the Kalachuri-Chēdi era3, and none has noticed the inscription since then. At my request Dr. N. P. Chakravarti, the Government Epigraphist, kindly visited Makundpur in 1931. He was fortunately successful in tracing the inscribed slab, and supplied me with excellent estampages from which the inscription is edited here. The record is incised on a slab lying on the ruins of a small temple4 situated to the north-west of Rūpasāgar, a large tank, at Makundpur. The inscribed surface measures 3' 2" in length and nearly 5" in height. The record has suffered considerably at the top, about half a dozen aksharas and the mātrās on the top of some more on the right-hand side of the first line being wholly or partially damaged.
The inscription consists of three lines of which the last two are shorter than the first. The characters belong to the Nāgarī alphabet of the eleventh century A.C. Most of the letters have a wedge or an inverted acute-angled triangle at the top. It is noteworthy that the left limb of ś is not joined to the right-hand vertical; th, though still without a vertical, has, for the first time in the records edited here, a horizontal line at the top, and h has a fully drawn tail. The language is Sanskrit. Attention may be drawn to the incorrect causal participle ghatāpita, 1.3, formed on the model of kārāpita which figures in earlier records, and the wrong gender in dharman=idam, 1. 2. As regards orthography, the sign for v is used to denote b in Vudha-, 1. I, and the dental s substituted for ś in Jalasayana-, 1. 2. The consonant preceding and following r is reduplicated in Sūttradhāra-, 1. 3 and dharma-, 1. 2 respectively. The inscription refers itself to the reign of Gāngēyadēva of the Later Kalachuri Dynasty. He is mentioned here with the title Mahārha-mahā-mahattaka which is rarely, if ever, seen to be assumed by rulers of the eminence and power of Gāngēyadēva. Owing to the mutilation of the Piawan rock inscription this is now the only known extant record of the reign of Gāngēyadēva. The object of the inscription is to record that the Śrēshthin Dāmōdara, the ornament of the family of Grihapati, caused a temple of Jalaśayana5 (Vishnu reposing on water) to be constructed. The work was executed by the Sūtradhāra Sāmbhūka. The chief interest of the inscription lies in its date, which is given with full details in
line I as Samvat 772, the 12th tithi of the bright fortnight of Kārttika, a Wednesday. Beglar called attention to the fact that from the form of the characters, the date cannot be
referred to the Vikrama Samvat. He also suggested that it probably referred to the Chēdi 1C. A. S. I. R., Vol. XIII, p. 5, n. I.
CORPUS INCRPTIONS INDICARUM
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