South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

GUNJI ROCK INSCRIPTION OF KUMARAVARADATTA

The inscription has been incised horizontally on a huge rock which, as stated before, lies beside the Damau Dahrā pool near Gunji. It consists of four lines, of which the fourth is of about half the length of the rest. The writing covers a space 6′ 6″ broad and 1′ high. The size of the letters varies from ·5″ to 1·2″. The inscription has suffered damage here and there from the effects of the weather,1 and on the proper right side, the surface of the rock has peeled off, causing the loss of about half a dozen aksharas in lines 3 and 4. Some more aksharas have become illegible in the middle of the first line and on the proper left side, but some of them can be supplied conjecturally. Very little of historical importance is therefore lost.

The characters are of the Brāhmī alphabet resembling in a general way those of the Nāsik inscription of Ushavadāta.2 The form of the initial a with the vertical ending in a curve turned to the right, the initial i consisting of three horizontal strokes, kh without a loop at the base, v with a double triangle and l with the base line prolonged to the left are also note-worthy peculiarities. As regards medial vowels, the sign for ā is generally added at the top, see sahas-āyu-, l.2, but in some cases at the middle, see Balādhikata, l.2 ; the u sign is formed by continuing the right limb and in some cases by adding a curve to the vertical, see putena, l.2 and Kumāra-, l.1 ; the medial e is generally denoted by a horizontal stroke to the left, but in khō it appears as a slanting stroke above the line. Many of the other letters show varying forms, marking a transition from the Asokan to the Kushāṇa alphabet. G and t, for instance, have the angular top in some cases and the rounded one in others, see Goḍachhasa, l.2 and Bhagavato, l.1 ; ṇatukeṇa and Vāsiṭhiputena, both in l.2 ; chha has the earlier form of a circle or an ellipse bisected by a vertical, saṁvachhare, l.2 ; and the later

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double-looped one in the same word in l.1 ; the dental d has throughout the transitional angular form open to the left, while the lingual ḍ has a round back in Goḍachhasa in l.2 and an angular one in Daṁḍanāyakena, ll.2 and 3 ; dh faces right in siddha[ṁ] but is rectangular in Balādhikatena, l.2, and circular in vadhiṇike, l.2 ; the Asokan form of the letter s occurs in the akshara sa of sahas-āyu-, l.2, but in other places it shows advanced forms, approximating in one case to that of the English letter N, see saṁvachhare and etasa, l.3. The numerical symbols for 4, 5 and 10 occur in the first line and those for 6, 10 and 1,000 in the third line.

In the advanced forms of several letters, the present inscription resembles the Nāsik inscription of Ushavadāta, but since it exhibits a considerable admixture of archaic forms not noticed in the latter, I put it slightly earlier. The inscription of Ushavadāta probably belongs to the second century A.D. as the year 42 mentioned in it is generally referred to the Śaka era. The present inscription may therefore be referred to the first half of the first century A. D.

The language is early Prakrit. As in other records of the age, double consonants are entirely absent except in gimha-, l.3, and bamhanānaṁ, ll.3 and 4. There is, again, no elision of intervocalic mutes as in literary Prakrits, see, e.g., ṇatukeṇa which, according to Hēmachandra (VIII, 1, 137), should be nattuena. For Usabha (Sanskrit, Ṛishabha) see Hēmachandra, VIII, 1, 24.3 In matajuna (Sanskrit, mātṛijana) we have an interchange of vowels as in viñchhuo (Sanskrit, vṛiśchika).4 Another noteworthy form is paṭhaviya (Sanskrit, pṛithivyām) in place of puhaviya or

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^[1]Since its discovery in 1903, the inscription has lost an akshara at the end of the first line and an ornamental figure after it, similar to the one in the beginning of the same line.These appear clearly in the photograph in the Gazetteer. They also show where the record ended originally.
^[2] Above, Vol. VIII, p. 82.
^[3] Compare Usabhadāta in l. 2 of the Nāsik cave inscription of Gantamīputra Sāṭakarṇi, (Above, Vol. VIII, p. 71).
^[4] R. G. Bhandarkar, Wilson Philological Lectures (1914), p. 92.