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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA AJMER STONE INSCRIPTION (1 Plate) D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND While dealing with the stone inscription containing portions of the Sanskrit drama entitled Harkēli-nāṭaka, composed by king Vigraharāja (1153-64 A.C.) of the Chāhamāna or Chauhān dynasty of Śākambharī, F. Kielhorn[1] deplored the strange vicissitidues of fortune that led the stones, on which the royal author made the products of his muse known to the people, to “ have been used as common building material for a place of Muhammadan worship by the conquerors of his descendants.” Portions of the above drama as well as of the Lalita-Vigraharāja-nāṭaka, composed in honour of the Chāhamāna king by his court poet, Mahākavi Sōmadēva, which were edited by Kielhorn,[2] were copied from stone slabs embedded in the walls of the Ārhāi-din-kā-Jhõprā, a mosque situated on the lower slope of the Tārāgarh hill at Ajmer. The mosque, as is well known, was built out of the spoils of Hindu structures by Qutb-ub-dīn Aibak (first Sultān of Delhi, 1206-10 A.C.) in 1200 A.C., while Sultān Iltutmish (1211-36 A.C.) subsequently beautified it with a screen.[3] Impressions of another inscription on a stone slab from the same mosque were recently supplied to me by Mr. U. C. Bhaṭṭāchārya, Curator of the Rajputana Museum, Ajmer. It appears that all these inscribed slabs had originally belonged to some temples or public buildings raised by the imperial Chāhamānas, the materials of which were later utilised in the construction of the Ārhāidin-kā-Jhõprā.
The impressions of the Ajmer (Ārhāi-din-kā-Jhpõrā) inspeription, received by me from [Mr. U. C. Bhaṭṭāchārya, had a printed slip attached to them. It assigns the inscription to the twelfth century and mentions it as exhibit No. 256 of the Rajputana Museum. It further says, “ This inscription forms the beginning of a Sanskrit poem engraved on slabs. It contains invocation to Nārāyaṇa and various other gods and states that the Chauhāns belonged to the solar race ”. The description of the contents is, however, not strictly accurate. The inscription under discussion covers a space nearly 4′ 2″ in length nd 1′ 9½″ in height. There are altogether 27 lines of writing each letter being a little above ½″ in height. The engraving is neat and beautiful, although the stone is damaged in several places and some letters have broken away. As, however, the engraver is sometimes found to have avoided a damaged part of the stone (cf. the damaged space between vāhaº and [nō] in line 2, between vāta-vyādhi and yutō in line 4, between kumudāº and ºd=aṁbhōja in line 24), there is no doubt that the stone was defective in laces even when the inscription was incised. The palaeography and orthography of the inscriptin resemble closely those of other records of about the twelfth century found in the same area, and nothing calls for special mention. As the mosque, to which the inscribed stone belongs, is known to have been built in 1200 A.C. with the spoils of local structures, it is possible to attribute the date of the record to some time between the accession of the Chāhamāna king Ajayarāja (circa 1110-35 A.C.) who is credited[4] with the foundation of Ajayamēru, now known as Ajmer, and with beautifying it with many temples and palaces, and 1200 A.C. when the Ārhāi-din-kā-Jhõprā was constructed, that is to say, somewhere in the twelfth century. _________________________________________________
[1] See IA, Vol. XX, pp. 201 ff., Gōttinger Festschrift, 1901, pp. 16-30. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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