South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

Verse 1 introduces a person who was a member of the council of the hereditary ministers (maul-āmātya-sabhā) of the king of Gauḍa, whose name is not mentioned. The name of the officer is doubtful, but seems to be Maṅgadēva. He is further stated to have been the Mahāsāndhivigrahika (i.e. minister for war and peace) of his master. Verse 2 speaks of the said officer’s son whose name was Chaṅgadēva. He is stated to have received the title ‘Rāṇaka of the Kingdom’ which, as the epigraph says, was very difficult to obtain. There is little doubt that, like his father, Chaṅgadēva was also a servant of the Gauḍa king who honoured him with the said title ; but the king is not even referred to in the stanza.

Verse 3 introduces Bhīmadēva who was the son of Chaṅgadēva and the hero of the praśasti. Like his grandfather, Bhīmadēva is described as the Mahāsāndhivigrahika of the lord of the Gauḍa country. Verse 4 praises the military exploits and liberality of Bhīmadēva in a vague way. In the first half of the stanza, the poet says that one of the battle-fields, where Bhīmadēva destroyed his enemies’ elephant force and which was bristling with arrows, narrated, as it were, the story of his valour and that, because it disliked its repetition (i.e. another battle fought on itself), it failed to appreciate fully his great prowess which was exhibited in battles elsewhere. According to the second half of the verse, in bestowing gifts to the numerous supplicants, Bhīmadēva used the waters of the rivers so profusely that those rives completely dried up while new streams began to flow on the dry earth. The next stanza (verse 5) refers to one of his significant achievements. It is stated that he saved the kingdom of Gauḍa-Varēndra after it had been immersed in the waters of the ocean that was the forces of the king of the Rāyāri lineage and the king of Kaliṅga. In this connection, the condition of the Gauḍa-Varēndra kingdom, apparently under the rule of Bhīmadēva’s master, is compared with that of an old vessel in the state of sinking in waters. Verse 6 refers to the object of the eulogy which is to record the construction of a temple of the god Bhava (i.e. Śiva) by Bhīmadēva on the bank of the Avimukta-nadī. The purpose of Bhīmadēva in building the temple is stated to have been to cause wonder in the minds even of his enemies. The last stanza (verse 7) says that the top of the temple was adorned with a golden jar resembling āditya-kācha, probably meaning the jewel called sūryakānta.

The inscription raises certain interesting problems. The first of these relates to the date of the record and the second to the identity of Bhīmadēva’s master, i.e. the king of Gauḍa or the Gauḍa-Varēndra kingdom, whom he served as the minister for war and peace. The third problem refers to the circumstances leading to the construction of the temple at Banaras by Bhīmadēva far away from the kingdom of Gauḍa or Gauḍa-Varēndra and the fourth to the invasion (probably a joint invasion) of the Gauḍa-Varēndra kingdom by the forces of a king of the Rāyāri dynasty and a king of Kaliṅga, from which Bhīmadēva claims to have saved it. The fifth problem is the identity of the two enemies of Gauḍa-Varēndra.

As to the date of the record, the palaeography does not appear to suggest a period earlier than the twelfth century. The form of the initial vowel i in our inscription has resemblance with the fourth stage in its final formation as illustrated by Ojha in his charts showing the development of the Dēvanāgarī and Bengali alphabets^[1] as well as with its form in his illustrations from two inscriptions^[2] of 1264 and 1273 A.D. respectively. R. D. Banerji traced the earliest occurrence of a somewhat similar form of i in the Bodhgaya inscriptions of Aśōkachalla, which belong to the thirteen century.^[3] But we know that the Gauḍa-Varēndra country in the western and northern

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^[1] See Ojha, Palaeography of India (Hindi), Plates LXXXII and LXXXIII.
^[2] Ibid., Plate XXVII.
^[3] The Origin of the Bengali Script. p. 89. The letter as found in these inscriptions (above, Vol. XII, Plates between pp. 28 and 29) appears to be somewhat more developed than its form in the inscription under study. As regards the development of the Bengali form of the letter i, see also lines 8 and 31 of the Madanpara plate of Viśvarūpasēna (JAS, Letters, Vol. XX, 1954, Plate between pp. 216 and 217).