THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS
2 mahārāja-chhagalaga-pautrasya mahārāja-Vishṇudāsa-putrasya Sanakāni-
kasya mahār[āja] . . . lasy1=āyaṁ dēya-dharmaḥ|2
TRANLATION
Luck ! In the year 80 2, on the eleventh lunar day of the bright fortnight of the month Āshāḍha, (is made) this, the religious benefaction3 of the Sanakānika,4 the Mahārāja . . .
dhala (?), the son’s son of the Mahārāja Chhagalaga; (and) the son of the Mahārāja Vishṇudāsa, who meditates on the feet of the Paramabhaṭṭāeaka Mahārājādhirāja, the glorious
Chandragupta (II).
No. 8: PLATE VIII
GAḌHWĀ STONE INSCRIPTION OF CHANDRAGUPTA II: THE YEAR 88
This inscription, and the following two inscriptions of Kumāragupta, Nos. 17 and 26,
are on a stone that discovered in 1871-72 by Rājā Śiva Prasād, and were first brought
to notice by General Cunningham in his CASIR, Vol. III, p. 55 and Vol. X, p. 9. It was
afterwards re-edited by J. F. Fleet in CII., Vol. III, 1888, pp. 36 ff., Plate IV B.
Gaḍhwā, which means literally ‘a fort,’ is the name of several villages in the Arail and
Bārā Pargaṇās in the Karchhanā Tahsīl or Sub-Division of the Allahābād District, Uttar
Pradesh. The particular Gaḍhwā, where these inscriptions were found, is in the Bārā Pargaṇā
eight miles to the west by south from Bārā, and one and a half miles south of the village of
Bhaṭgaḍh. It is entered in the map simply as a “Fort.” The stone containing the inscriptions
was found built into the wall of one of the rooms of a modern dwelling-house inside the
enclosure of the fort; and is a rectangular sandstone fragment, measuring about 9-½" broad
by 4" thick and 2' 6-½" high. It is now in the Indian Museum at Calcutta.
The stone is inscribed on three faces,—on the front, as it stands in the Museum, and on
the two sides. It is entire towards the bottom; but the top of it, containing two or three lines
of writing, has been broken away and lost. In addition to this, the sides now contain only
about half of each line of the inscriptions engraved on them; and this, with the unfinished
roughness of the present back of the stone, shows that about half of it has been pared away,
in adapting it to some other purpose than that for which it was originally intended.
On the front of the stone, towards the top, traces are visible of eleven lines of writing,
each of about thirteen letters, in characters of the same period with those of the inscriptions
that are now published. But no part of this inscription, which seems to have been quite
distinct from those on the sides, can be read; and the traces of it that remain are not worth
being photographed.
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1 The letter preceding lasya, which is partially preserved, is taken by Fleet as ḍha. But this ḍha is quite unlike
ḍha in Āshāḍha in line 1. The original name seems to have consisted of four letters.
2 Fleet takes this symbol as double daṇḍa. But this is clearly one horizontal stroke between the two dots of the visarga of-dharmmaḥ.
3 Monier Williams in his Sankrit-English Dictionary renders dēya-dharma by ‘the duty of giving, charity’; Dowson,
by ‘votive offering’ (e.g., JRAS., Vol. V, p. 184) ; Bühler and Bhagwanlal Indraji, by ‘meritorious gift (or benefaction)’
(e.g., ASWI., Vol. IV, p. 83) ; and Senart by ‘a pious gift’ (Ep. Ind., Vol. VIII, p. 76, Nos. 7-8). The word literally
means ‘a religious gift (dharma), which is fit to be given’. It had better be translated with R. G. Bhandarkar by ‘a
benefaction’ (Collected Works of R. G. Bhandarkar, Vol. I, p. 235).
4 See p. 243 above, note 3.
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