North Indian Inscriptions

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS

269 ff., and 277 ff., Rajendralal Mitra published his readings of the text, with a lithograph, from a baked clay impression made by Major C. Hollings, and sent to the Society in 1861. And in 1871, in the CASIR., Vol. I, pp. 37 ff. and plate xvii, General Cunningham published his own lithograph of the inscription. It was afterwards edited by J.F. Fleet in the CII., Vol. III, 1888, pp. 47 ff. and plate VI B, and annotated by R. C. Majumdar in the IC., Vol. X, pp. 17 ff.

       Bihar¹ is the chief town of the Bihar Sub-Division of the Patna District in the Bihar State. The broken red sandstone column on which the inscription is, was eventually removed by A.M. Broadley, Magistrate of Bihar, and was set up on a brick pedestal opposite the Bihar Court House², where it still stands. Broadley perpetuated the inverted position of the column, upside down; and also disfigured it with an English inscription, printed in full by General Cunningham, a few letters of which appear in the lithograph now published. Also, the column, as placed by Broadley, stands now in the middle of a house, the roof of which is supported by it; and the last eight lines of the inscription, shewn in Rajendralal Mitra’s and General Cunningham’s lithographs are now completely hidden, and rendered quite inaccessible, by a wooden structure placed on the top, i.e., the proper bottom of the pillar, in order to connect it with the roof.

       The writing originally extended, in the First Part, lines 1 to 13, over four of the faces of the column, as is shewn by the metre of the extant portion; and in the Second Part, lines 14 ff., over three faces, as is shewn by the number of letters lost in each line. The extant portion, now lithographed, covers a space of about 1' 4" broad by 3' 5" high, and is in a state of fairly good preservation. The size of the letters varies from 3/8” to 5/8”. The characters belong to the northern class of alphabets, and approximate closely to those of the Allahābād pillar inscription of Samudragupta, No. 1, pp. 203 ff., above, Plate I. They include, in lines 11 and 13, forms of the numerical symbols for 3, 5 and 30. The language is Sanskrit; and the inscription is in verse as far as line 10, and the rest in prose. In respect of orthography, the only points that call for notice are (1) the use of the dental nasal instead of the anusvāra, before ś, in anśa-, lines 11 and 13; (2) the doubling of k and t, in conjunction with a following r, e.g., in chakkrē, line 10 (but not in vikramēṇa, line 3), and pauttrasya, line 17; and (3) the doubling of dh, in conjunction with a following y, in anudddhyāta, line 22.

       The first part of the inscription mentions the Imperial Gupta king Kumāragupta, and seems to have recorded the name of his wife, which is, however, lost in the part that has peeled off. But this part of the inscription seems to belong to the time of his successor Skandagupta, from the mention of apparently a village name Skandaguptabaṭa, in line 11. This part of the inscription records the erection of a circle of shrines of Bhadrāryā and other deities and in front thereof a column, which in line 10 is called a yūpa or a ‘sacrificial post’, apparently by some minister whose sister had become Kumāragupta’s wife. This minister seems to be Anantasēna been Anantadēvī mentioned in Nos. 44-46 below as mother of Puru (=Skanda)gupta. And the inscription further recorded certain shares in the village of Skandaguptabaṭa(?), and in another agrahāra, the name of which is lost. From the mention of Skanda and the divine Mothers, in
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¹ The ‘Bihar and Behar’ of maps, etc., Indian Atlas, Sheet No. 103 Lat. 25⁰ 11' N.; Long. 85⁰ 33' E. The proper form of the name, which is by no means and uncommon one for villages in Northern and Central India, is, of course, Bihar, with the vowel i in the first syllable, from the Sanskrit vihāra, ‘a Buddhist (and Jain) temple or convent;’ and this is the form that is used by the people of the Patna District. The Sanskrit name, Vihāra, occurs in lines 9-10 of the ‘Pesserawa’ inscription, now stored in the collection at Bihar, where the place is called “Vihāra, the city of the glorious Yaśōvarman” (JBAS., Vol. XVII, p. 492 ff.)
² CASIR., Vol. XI, pp. 192 ff.