North Indian Inscriptions

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS

undertook tours in Bundēlkhaṇḍ and Mālwā. It was, however, edited critically for the first time by J. F. Fleet in Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, Vo. III, 1888, pp. 18 ff. The text of it was thereafter annotated first by K.P.Jayaswal in the History of India 150 A.D. to 350 A.D., pp. 140 ff. and afterwards by Dasharatha Sharma in the Journal of Indian History, Vol. XIV, pp. 27 ff., and then by Prof. Jagannath, in the same journal.¹

       Ēraṇ, the ancient Airikiṇa, is a village on the left bank of Bīnā, eleven miles to the west by north from Khurāī, the chief town of the Khurāī Tahsil of the Sagar District in Madhya Pradesh. The inscription is on a red-sandstone squared block, that was found a short distance to the west of the well-known ruined temple of Varāha, the Boar incarnation of Vishṇu, in which there is the inscription of Tōramāṇa.² The original stone is now in the Indian Museum at Calcutta.

       The writing, which covers the entire front of the stone, about 9-½" broad by 3' 1" high, is in a state of fairly good preservation; but it does not give a very clear lithograph, in consequence of the whole surface of the stone being full of holes more or less large. It is only a fragment; six entire lines, as shown by the numbering of the verses, have been broken away and lost at the top of the stone, and an indefinite number at the bottom; and also an entire pāda of each successive verse has been broken away and lost at the commencement of lines 25 ff. In addition to this, from one to three letters have been destroyed at the commencement of each extant line, as far as line 24, by whetting tools on the edge of the stone. As far as line 24, each line contains one pāda of a verse; but the lines that follow contained originally two pādas each; this shows that the inscription was of an irregular shape, with probably some sculptures on the proper right side of the stone above the first halves of lines 24 ff. The average size of the letters is about ½". As is indicated especially by the form of m, the characters belong to the southern class of alphabets. They include, in the numbering of the verses, forms of the numerical symbols for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The language is Sanskrit. And the inscription is written in verse throughout, and the stanzas numbered by figures. In respect of orthography, the only points that call for notice are (1) the use of the guttural nasal, instead of the anusvāra, before h, in paribṛiṅhana(ṇa), line 26; and (2) the doubling of k and dh, in conjunction with a following r, in vikkrama, line 13 and parākkrama, lines 17 and 21; and in ddhrutam, line 12.

       The inscription is one of the Imperial Gupta king Samudragupta, whose name is recorded in line 10. Whether any of his ancestors were mentioned in the lines preceding it, we do not know, as lines 1-6 have been completely destroyed. Lines 25 onwards record the object of the inscription and refer to something that was erected at Airikiṇa, i.e., Ēraṇ. And lines 11-24 contain the description of prowess, etc., of a king who can be no other than Samudragupta as the name of no other prince is found in any one of these intervening lines. We have, therefore, to take it that it was this Gupta monarch that was responsible for the erection of something referred to in the inscription. Judging from its shape and appearance, the stone was originally an integral part of some temple. And Cunningham has suggested that “if it was attached to any of the existing ruins, the most probable would be the old temple of the colossal Vishṇu, with its massive capitals and mouldings, which were discarded at a later date for pillars of a more highly ornamented style.”³ And the lacunae of lines 26-27 can be easily filled so as to give this result, as may be seen from notes on page 222 (of the Text).⁴ The date of the inscription, if any was recorded, is broken away and lost.
_______________________________________

¹ JIH., Vol. XIX, pp. 27 ff. See also PIHC (1951), PP. 62 ff., and JOI., Vol. XX, pp. 51 ff.
² CII., Vol. III, 1888, No. 36, pp. 158 ff.
³ CASIR., Vol. X, p. 89.
⁴ See also note 1 on page 224 (of the Translation), below.