North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR

tahsil of the same name in the Bilaspur District of Madhya Pradesh. They have been edited before, with a lithograph but without any translation, by Rai Bahadur Hiralal in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XIX, pp. 75 ff. The record is edited here from the original plates and their ink-impressions kindly furnished by Mr. K Natarajan, Superintendent, Government Press, Nagpur.

They are a set of two plates, each of which measures 11” broad, 8” high and . 1” thick. Their rims are raised for the protection of the writing. They are inscribed on one side only, and contain at the top a round hole, .3” in diameter, for the ring which must have originally held them together. But neither the ring nor the seal which it may have carried has been discovered. The surface of both the plates has been corroded here and there, which has resulted in the loss of a few letters; otherwise the writing is in a state of fair preservation. The average size of the letters is .3” except in the last five lines on the second plate where, for want of sufficient space, it has been reduced to .2”. The weight of the plates is 107 tolas.

The characters are Nāgari. The left portion of the initial a and ā shows a curve, see ashṭādaś-, 1.8 and ādāya,1.7; the initial i has two different forms in iti, 1. 11 and iśa-, in 1.40; the palatal ś shows transitional forms; see -Tripur-īśa, 1.9, and śrīmad-, 1. 28. Its modern form as the first member of the conjunct śr occurs in śrēshṭhī, 1.34; the left portion of kh shows a tail in some places, see, e.g., khalu, 1. 34, its older form being noticed in Nōnnal-ākhyā 1.16; dh also shows a fully developed left limb in dharmmaḥ, 1.35, but it has elsewhere its old form; see, e.g., dhīrō 1. 13; ṅ is still without a dot; see -Vaṅkēśvar-, 1. 28.

The language is Sanskrit. Except for the opening ōṁ namō Vrahmaṇē and some portion of the formal part of the grant, the record is metrically composed throughout. There are twenty-two verses in all, of which the first and the third occur in the earlier re cords of the main branch of the Kalachuri dynasty, e.g., the Banaras plates of Karṇa, while the last six, which, as usual, are benedictive and imprecatory, are found in several other grants. The present inscription was very carelessly composed and written or incised. There are several mistakes due to omission or incorrect writing of words which make the task of interpretation very difficult, especially in the formal part of the grant. As regards orthography, the sign of v is everywhere employed to denote b; see, e.g., -Vrahmaṇē, 1.2, -vibhyat-, 1.4; the anusvāra is wrongly changed to n before s and h; see tad-vansa-, 1.5, -sinhāḥ, 1.8; while the palatal ś and dental s have been confused in many places; see -Sākaṁbharī, 1.7 and śatya-vāchaḥ, 1. 34.

The plates were granted by Pṛithvīdēva (I) of the Kalachuri Dynasty of Ratanpur. After the customary obeisance to Brahman, the record mentions after the sun and Manu, Kārtavīrya who imprisoned Rāvaṇa. His descendants were known as Haihayas. In their family was born Kōkkala¹, the founder of the family of the Chēdi kings. He is said to have despoiled the kings of Karṇāṭa, Vaṅga, Gurjara, Kōṅkaṇa and Śākambharī, the Turushkas and the descendants of Raghu of their treasure, horses and elephants, and erected a pillar of victory. He had eighteen sons of whom the eldest became the lord of Tripurī. He made his brothers the lords of maṇḍalas by his side. In the family of a younger brother of these was born Kaliṅgarāja. His son was Kamalarāja, who vanquished the king of Utkala and gave his fortune to his lord __________________

¹ The name appears elsewhere as kōkalla. The form used here is probably due to the exigencies of the metre.