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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS ĒRAṆ STONE PILLAR INSCRIPTION OF BUDHAGUPTA: YEAR 165 vation. (And) the future administrators should guard it looking (upon it) as a religious gift.â (Line 11) And it has been said by the great sages: (Verse 1) He, who takes away land given by himself or by others, having become a worm in excreta, rots with his forefathers. (Verse 2) Land has been granted by many kings, Sagara and others. The fruit (of such grant) belongs to whosoever possesses the earth (at any time). (Verse 3) The giver of land rejoices in heaven for sixty thousand years. He who resumes it and he who assents to (it) may dwell in hell for exactly those (years). No. 39 : PLATE XXXIX ĒRAṆ STONE PILLAR INSCRIPTION OF BUDHAGUPTA: THE YEAR 165 This inscription was discovered in 1838 by Captain T.S. Burt, of the Engineers, and was first brought to notice in the same year, in the JBAS., Vol. VII, pp. 633 ff., when James Prinsep published his reading of the text, and a translation of it,1 accompanied by a lithograph (ibid., Plate xxxi), reduced from an ink-impression made by Captain Burt. In 1861, in the same Journal, Volume XXX, pp. 17 ff., Fitz Edward Hall published his revised reading of the text, from the original pillar, and a translation of it. And finally, in 1880, in the CASIR., Vol. X, p. 82, General Cunningham, in reprinting Hall’s translation, pointed out that the aksharas in line 3,—in which Prinsep had found a reference to the Surāshṭras; and which Hall read as saṁsurabhū, and translated by “chosen land of the gods,”—were in reality a repetition of the date in numerical symbols, as had, in fact, been suggested, though without particularisation, by Hall himself, in the JBAS., Vol. XXX, p. 127, note. It was for the first time critically edited by J.F. Fleet in the CII., Vol. III, 1888, pp. 88 and ff., and Plate XII A.
This is another inscription from Ēraṇ2 in the Khurāī Sub-Division of the Sagar District in Madhya Pradesh. It is on the west face towards the bottom of the lower and square part of a large monolith red-sandstone column, which stands near the well-known group of temples about half a mile to the west of the village, and which seems from its position to be specially connected with a small double temple that General Cunningham has named the “Lakshmī Temple,”3 separated by the intervening “Vishṇu Temple” from the “Varāha Temple” or temple of the Boar, at which there is the well-known inscription of Tōramāṇa.4 The writing, which covers a space of about 2' 6-½" broad by 1' 7½" high, has suffered a
good deal in places from the weather; but on the original column the whole inscription can
be read with certainty, except a few letters at the proper left side that have been quite worn
away by sharpening tools on the edge of the stone. The bottom line of the inscription is about
3' 3" above the plinth from which the column rises. The size of the letters varies from ½"
to ¾". The characters on the whole belong to the southern variety of the Gupta alphabet;
because though m is of the eastern type, s, h and so forth are unquestionably of the Malwa
be. Further it is worthy of note that even in the Gupta age the oblong land-measure of 9X8, Nala was not prevalent
in all the parts of Bengal. Thus the Pahāṛpur plate (Ep. Ind., Vol. XX, pp. 59 ff.) speaks of only shaṭka-naḍaiḥ
in line 19. Shaṭka-naḍa was thus a reed six cubits in length and denoted a linear measure.
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