South Indian Inscriptions

INCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF TRIPURI

given by us as a grant, (you) should pay all dues such as bhāga,¹ bhāga,² taxes, levy in gold, the produce of mines and so forth to this (grantee). Not even wind should blow in (the village) with a view to harm him!’’
(The following is) the solicitation (of the grantor):---
(Here follow six benedictive and imprecatory varses).
(In) the year 793, on the 9th (lunar) day of dark (fortnight) of Phālguna, on Monday.

No.49; PLATE XXXIX
PAIKORE STONE PILLAR INSCRIPTION OF KARNA

THIS inscription was discovered by Mr. Nagendranath Basu, and a transcript of it made by him and M.M. Haraprasād Śāstrī was first published without any facsimile in the Bĩrdhūmabibarana, Vol. II, p. 10. Its transcript was subsequently given together with a description and a photograph of the pillar on which it is engraved by Rao Bahadur K.N. Diskshit in the Annual Report of the Archæological Survey of India for 1921-22, 22, pp.78 ff. and pl. XXVIII (a). The inscription is edited here from a set of impressions kindly supplied by the Superintendent of the Archæological Section Indian Museum, Culcutta.

‘Paikore³ is about three miles to the east of the Murarai Station on the Loop Line of the E.I. Railway. The name is supposed to be a corrupted form of Prāchīkōta or the ‘Eastern Citadel’. . . . . The most important antiquities of Paikore are the two inscribed pillars at Nārāyana-chatvara, lying on a masonry platform by the side of a tank, along with an image of Narasimha and several others. The inscriptions refer to the Chēdi King Karna and King Vijayasēna. Both the pillars seem to have been crowned with images and the inscriptions engraved on them must have referred to the dedication of the images. The Vijayasēna pillar clearly exhibits the headless figure of the goddess Mānasā, while Karnadēva being broken off just at the commencement of the inscription shows no trace of the image. The pillars must have been sunk into the floor, as we see from the rough-hewn surface of the lowermost portion of the Karnadēva pillar, the square and octagonal sections of the shaft above being highly polished and decorated with beautiful tracery. The design on each side of the square is that of a vase (mangalakalaśa), the top and bottom of which are covered with full-blown lotuses and foliage, while at the centre appears a kĩrtimukha, the necklaces of pearls issuing from which are held by bearded attendants.

‘The inscription begins on the tapering circular portion of the shaft and is continued over the octagonal section.’4 It consists of six lines of unequal length, the first measuring only 1.5” and the last 9”. It has suffered by exposure to weather especially in the first four lines. The characters belong to the proto-Bengali variety of the North Indian alphabets. The average size of the letters is .2”. The forms of j, t, p and s are specially noteworthy. The letters were written in a hurried cursive hand and were incised very shallow. The reading is, therefore, doubtful in many cases. At the top of some letters such as d, p and y there appears a hook such as is noticeable in some places in the Bē#275;lāva copper-plates of Bhōjavarman 5 and the Deopārā stone inscription of Vijayasēna.⁶ R,
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¹ Bhāga is a share of produce.
² Bhāga probably refers to some petty taxes in kind such as are mentioned in the Manusmriti, Adhyaya VII, vv. 130-132
³ Properly, Pāikōda, a corrupt form of Prāchĩkōta.
⁴ A. R. A. S. I. for 1921-22, p.79
⁵ Ep. Ind., Vol. XII, pp. 37 ff
⁶ Ibid, Vol. I, pp. 305