THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS
MEHARAULI IRON PILLAR INSCRIPTION OF CHANDRA
known by the family-name of Śāba, conversant with Grammar, Polity, Logic and Popular
Usage and Custom, a poet, an inhabitant of Pāṭaliputra.1
(Verse 5) He has come hither with that same king who is desirous of conquering the
whole earth and has through devotion caused to be made this cave to the divine Śambhu.
No. 12: PLATE XII
MEHARAULI IRON PILLAR INSCRIPTION OF CHANDRA
This inscription was first brought to notice in 1834, in the JASB., Vol. III, p. 494, where
James Princep published a lithograph of it (ibid., Plate xxx), reduced from a facsimile
made in 1831 by Lieutenant William Elliot, 27th Regiment N. I. This lithograph was not
accompanied by any details of the contents of the inscription; and it does not represent a
single letter of the original correctly, and is quite unintelligible from beginning to end. In
1838, in the same Journal, Vol. III, pp. 629 ff., James Prinsep published a much improved
lithograph (ibid., Plate xxxiii) reduced from an ink-impression made in the same year by
Captain T. S. Burt, of the Engineers; and, with it, his own reading of the text and a translation of it. And finally, in 1875, in the JBBRAS., Vol. X, pp. 63 ff., Bhau Daji published
a revised version of the text and translation, including the correct reading of the king’s name
as Chandra, with a lithograph which appears to have been reduced from a copy on cloth
made by Bhagwanlal Indraji. But it was critically edited for the first time by J. F. Fleet
in CII., Vol. III, 1888, pp. 139 ff., along with Plate XXI A.
Meharaulī, or Meṁharaulī—an evident corruption of Mihirapurī,—is a village
nine miles almost due south of Delhi, the chief town of the Delhi District. The inscription
is on the west side of a tapering iron column, sixteen inches in diameter at the base and
twelve at the top, and twenty-three feet eight inches high, standing near the well-known
Kutb Minār in the ancient fort of Rāy Pithōrā within the limits of this village.
The writing, which covers a space of about 2’ 9-½” broad by 10-½” high, is in a state
of excellent preservation throughout, owing, of course, to the nature of the substance on which
it is engraved. The bottom line of the inscription is about 7’ 2” above the stone platform round
the lower part of the column. The engraving is good; but, in the process of it, the metal closed
up over some of the strokes, which gives a few of the letters a rather imperfect appearance in
the lithograph; this is especially noticeable in the sy of the opening word yasyō, and in the r of
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1 Fleet’s translation of verse 4 is hopelessly bad. That given by Bühler is much better. Sāndhivigraha, I take
in the sense of Sandhivigrah-ādhikaraṇa0 occurring in some post-Gupta inscriptions (e.g., in Nos. 1209, 1312 and 1313
of D. R. Bhandarkar’s A List of the Inscriptions of Northern India). Lōka has, according to Bühler, the same meaning as
Vārttā, which is explained by Kauṭalya thus:
.............................Kṛishi-paśupālyē vaṇijyā cha vārtā ﺍ
.............................dhānya-paśu-hiranya-kupya-vishṭi-pradānād=
.............................aupakārikī (Arthaśāstra, I. 4. 1-2),
âAgriculture, cattle-breeding and trade constitute vārtā. It is serviceable inasmuch as it brings in grains, cattle,
gold, forest produce and free labour.” It is safer, however, to take lōka in the sense of lōk-āchāra, ‘Popular Usage
and Custom’, in other words, ‘Law’, with which it was absolutely necessary for a minister to be conversant. As
regards śabd-ārtha0 it is best to split it up into Śabda, ‘Grammar,’ and Artha, ‘Polity’ as Bühler has done, though
Kielhorn has taken it in the sense of “the science of words and their meanings, i.e., grammar” in line 13 of the
Junāgaḍh rock inscription of Rudradāman (Ep. Ind., Vol. VIII, p. 48 and note 2), because it seems more reasonable
to take every one of the words forming the compound śabd-ārtha-nyāya-lōkajñaḥ as denoting one particular science
as it can bear that meaning. And here Śabda by itself can denote Śabda-śāstra, ‘Science of Grammar’; and similarly
Artha by itself Artha-śāstra, ‘Science of Polity’. Besides, the study of Artha-śāstra was, by no means, slack or neglected
in the Gupta period. On the contrary, it was very much alive. It was indispensable for a king or minister to make
himself thoroughly acquainted with it.
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