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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA BHADRAK INSCRIPTION OF GANA ; REGNAL YEAR 8 that double consonants began to appear in such records in the third century A.C.[1] As our inscription shows the use of double consonant only in one case (cf. ayya in line 2, for Sanskrit ārya, instead of the earlier epigraphic Prakrit form aya), it may reasonably be assigned to the same third century. That it has to be assigned to a date earlier than the fourth century is suggested again by the Susunia inscription[2] of king Chandravarman who ruled over South-West Bengal (adjacent to North-East Orissa in which Bhadrak, the findspot of our record, is situated) about the middle of the fourth century A. C. and was defeated by the mighty Gupta emperor Samudragupta. The language of the Susunia inscription is Sanskrit and suggests that Prakrit was ousted from the inscriptions of that area at an earlier date.
The Bhadrak inscription begins with traces of a short horizontal line which appears to stand for the usual siddham symbol. This is followed by the word Mah[ā]r[ā]ja. The following two aksharas read : sir[i], although traces of the vowel-mark are not distinct above the second akshara. This is because the stone is broken here. What comes next has to be read as Gaṇasa. The tops of all these three letters are damaged owing to the breaking away of a piece of stone as well as to corrosion about th upper parts of the second and third aksharas ; but there is hardly any doubt about the reading. Then comes Sa[ṁ 8 | ]. Traces of the anusvāra above sa are faintly visible ; but the upper right side of the letter is completely corroded. The symbol for 8, which here resembles the 8 sign reproduced by Ojha from the inscriptions of the Kuhsāṇa age in his work, Plate LXXI, i (cf. the third symbol for 8) is partially corroded, traces of the lost part being fortunately still slightly visible. The daṇḍa that follows the numeral is indicated here by a short vertical line. The first half of line 1, besides the siddham symbol at the beginning, thus reads : Mahārāja-siri-Gaṇas Saṁ 8, in Sanskrit Mahārāja-śrī-Gaṇasya Saṁ 8 (=saṁvatsarē ashṭamē). The inscription is therefore dated in the eighth regnal year of a king called Mahārāja śrī-Gaṇa. The name cannot be read as Guṇa as there is absolutely no trace of any u-mātrā attached to g. With the name of the king mentioned in our record, we may compare that of Mahāsainyapati śrī-Gaṇa, known from the Hayungthal copper-plate inscription[3] of king Harjaravarman of Assam. In both these cases, śrī appears to be an honorific and not an integral part of the name. That the name of the king mentioned in the Bhadrak inscription is most probably Gaṇa and not Śrīgaṇa seems to be suggested by the fact that, unlike Śrīgaṇa, Gaṇa (literally meaning the god Gaṇēśa or an attendant of Śiva)[4] is actually known to have been used as a personal name in ancient India. Gaṇa is the name of the author of the celebrated work entitled Aśvāyurvēda,[5] while the Matsya Purāṇa[6] speaks of a gōtra-kāra named Gaṇa. The second half of line 1 of our inscription reads : [M]ūlajap[ēna] d[ē]vā 3 dat[ā]. The upper part of mū is corroded. Although the traces now visible would rather suggest a slightly earlier form of m than that of the other cases of the letter in the record, the akshara in question can hardly be read as anything else than mū. Parts of na are much corroded and the letter is really unrecognisable. Mūlajapa (literally meaning ‘ a mutterer of the mūla-mantra, i.e., a particular sacred text or sounds ’) is a personal name, while the word dēva has been apparently used in the sense of ‘an image of a god’ as in the Manusmṛiti (VIII, 87) and other works. Thus the above sentence _________________________________________________
[1] For the points raised, see Sircar’s Successors of the Sātavāhanas, 1939., pp. 87 and notes, 166 ; IHQ, Vol. XV, | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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