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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA over the Monghyr region possibly with his capital at Kawāyā-Jaynagar (ancient Champā),[1] a few miles from Lai, the findspot of our record and probably the home of Yaśaḥpāla, while Rāmapāla’s capital Rāmāvatī[2] was situated in North Bengal, possibly near Gaur in the Mālda District. This fact may go in favour of the identification of Rāṇaka Yaśaḥpāla’s suzerain with Palapāla. But it is impossible to be definite on this point in the present state of insufficient information. TEXT[3] 1 Siddham[4] Dānapati-vāsāgārika-Rā- 2 ṇaka-śrī-Yaśa[ḥ*]pāla-paṭṭarājñyā[ḥ*] 3 śrī-Vikrama[dē]vyāḥ || Saṁ 32 Vai …[5] C. Kaulēśvarī Hill Inscription of Vishṇugupta About twenty years ago, I received information regarding the existence of some inscriptions on rocks and boulders on the top of the Kuluhā or Kaulēśvarī Hill under the Hunterganj Police Station in the Hazārībāg District from a resident of a border village of the Gayā District. The hill stands about six miles from Hunterganj. On the 28th of February 1954, I visited the hill which is full of Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain relics, and copied all the inscriptions that were found there. On this occasion I received considerable help from Messrs. A. S. Khan and H. N. Sarma of the Hunterganj Police Station, to whom my thanks are due. In the following lines, I am dealing with the earliest epigraphic record of the place.
On a rugged boulder, parts of which have broken away, only two lines of writing could be traced. The upper line is incomplete inasmuch as the concluding letters have broken away. The space between the two lines is considerable ; but it is not possible to determine whether there was any writing in this area. The extant portion of the first line of writing is sixty inches long and contains twentyfour akshara together with the Siddham symbol at the beginning. The smallest letters in the line are each about 2½ inches in height while a conjunct with vowel-mark is often seven inches high. The second line is about nineteen inches in length. There are only six aksharas that are clear in it. The characters belong to the Northern Alphabet and the record may be assigned on palaeographical grounds to the seventh or eighth century A.D. In respect of palaeography, the inscription very closely resembles such other early medieval records from Bihār as the Mangraon epigraph[6] of the 17th year of Vishṇugupta’s reign. The first line of the inscription begins with the usual symbol for Siddham and reads : paramabhaṭṭāraka-mahārā[jādhirāja]-paraṁēśvara-śrī-Vishṇugu…. There is no doubt that the reference here is to the reign of an imperial ruler named Vishṇugupta. The second line, which is smaller, reads vyē Pōyarāja-sa[tra]. It seems therefore that the inscription consisted only of two big lines of writing and that it refers to a Satra near its findspot which was associated with a chief named Pōyarāja, apparently a feudatory of Vishṇugupta. The real significance of the word satra (correctly sattra), used in the inscription, is difficult to determine as various meanings are assigned to it by Sanskrit lexicons. Some of these meanings are ‘ a great Sōma sacrifice ’, ‘ any meritorious act equivalent to the performance of a Sattra ’, ‘ asylum, hospital, etc.’, ‘ a tank ’, ‘ munificence,’ although the word is now generally used in the sense of ‘ a house where free food is distributed ’. ________________________________________________
[1] Cf. JBRS, loc. cit.
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