South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

No 3─PALDI INSCRIPTION OF GUHILA ARISIMHA ; V. S. 1173

(1 Plate)

AKSHAYA KEERTY VYAS, UDAIPUR

The inscription was noticed by the late Pt. G. H. Ojhā in the Annual Report, Rājputānā Museum, Ajmer, for the year 1916. He attributes it to the reign of Guhila Vijayasiṁha, a copper-plate grant of whose reign he discovered in the possession of a resident of the village of Kadmāl,^[1] a few miles north-west of Udaipur. But he does not appear to have attempted to see whether the fragments of the inscribed lintels discovered by him would make a complete record. This is responsible for the grave error in its attribution, which has been accepted by almost all subsequent writers on the subject. It will be seen, as we proceed further, that the epigraph really pertains to the reign of Arisiṁha (son of Vijayasiṁha) who was the ruling prince in V. S. 1173 (1116 A.C.).

It is an every day experience of archaeologists to find ignorant folk indulging in treating important relics of the past without the slightest concern, whether they be epigraphs, sculptures or architectural remains, and our record presents a glaring illustration of this type of treatment. It was originally engraved on the inner faces of the three lintels spanning the open porch of a small shrine dedicated to Kārttikasvāmin (according to Ojhā), situated a bit obliquely in front of the Vāmēśvara Śiva temple near the village of Pālḍī, about five miles north of Udaipur. The two side lintels are still in situ ; but the central one, evidently longer in size, was not found in its original place when I visited the site a few years ago. As a matter of fact, it had already been broken into two pieces long ago, and the fragments had been put to different uses by the ignorant people. The smaller or the right side piece was shaped like a crude bracket chiselling away a portion of the inscription, to support a beam of the Nandi pavilion opposite the main Śiva temple ; and the bigger or the left side fragment was used for carving out satῑ figures in relief on its lower face, scratching away the lower part of the last line of the inscription. It was this latter piece containing the name of Vijayasiṁha, which was found out by Ojhā, while the former one which contained the name of his son Arisiṁha, he could not trace, though it also lay half-hidden in the structure of the pavilion near at hand. This is how the mistake crept in, which led to another mistake of assigning the Kadmāl plates to the reign of Vijayasiṁha, by shifting its genuine date to about two and a half decades later, in the light of the date of the present epigraph supposed to belong to his reign. Ojhā also thought that all these inscribes pieces of stone were possibly brought from Āhār and reset where they have been found ; but, in view of their dimensions, they appear to have formed part of the original structure in which they were found, in spite of the fact that they record the construction of the bigger temple dedicated to Śiva.

It is a brief record which does not admit of any special remark as regards its palaeography and orthography. It is written in Nāgarī characters. Śirō-mātrās and pṛishṭha-mātrās are both used to denote medial ai, ō and au, Y and p, though generally different in shape, have at places become almost identical ; cf. maulōpachaya (line 2), yō vijaya- (line 3). Nasal sound are represented both by anusvāra and class consonants ; e.g., [Bha]gavāñ=jagad-ēka-va(ba) ṁdhur=(line 8). V is used in lieu of b in a few cases. Consonants following r are generally reduplicated.

The language of the inscription is Sanskrit and the whole composition is in verse excepting the adoration to Śiva in a small sentence at the very outset, and the portion relating to the date, author, scribe, engraver and others, towards end, which are in prose. There are in all twenty-four verses in different metres, none of which is numbered.

The inscription opens with a symbol followed by salutation to Śiva. The luster of Śaṁbhu, i.e., Śiva, is praised in verse 1. Verse 2 describes in a poetic way the well-known royal family of Guhila. The manner in which Guhila is mentioned here proves him to be the real progenitor of

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^[1] Ojhā, Rājputānē kā Itihāsa, Fasc. II, pp. 445-46.