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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
ADDITIONAL INSCRIPTIONS ERAN STONE PILLAR INSCRIPTION OF SRIDHARAVARMAN prosperity and the happiness and well-being of all creatures.1 Satyanāga appears to be described further as a native of Mahārāshṭra and as the chief, apparently, of the Nāgas. The concluding verse expresses the hope that the yashṭi, enduring unimpaired, would proclaim there the duties of the warlike people; for it was a place where people-friends as well as foes-met together in a spirit of service and reverence. The Śaka king Śrīdharavarman, the son of the Śaka Nanda, is already known from the Kānākhērā inscription dated in his thirteenth year; but as he bears only the military title Mahādaṇḍanāyaka in that record, he was supposed by some scholars to be a military officer of some other ruler. The present inscription, which mentions the titles Rājan and Mahākshatrapa in connection with his name, leaves no room for doubt that he was an independent king. Though he bears the title Mahākshatrapa, he did not probably belong to the house of Chashṭana ; for, unlike the Western Kshatrapas, he does not date his records in the Śaka era.
The column on which the present inscription is incised is called yashṭi or a
memorial pillar2. In its corrupt form lashṭi ,this word occurs in four inscriptions of the reign
of the Western Kshatrapa Rudradāman, dated in the Śaka year 52 (130 A.C.), which
were discovered at Andhau in Cutch. Mr. R. D. Banerji, who has edited them in the
Epigraphia Indica3, took yashṭi (Prakrit laṭṭhi) to mean ‘ a funeral monument.’ Another
inscription, incised on a narrow stone slab⁴ with a pointed top, which was discovered at
Mūlavāsara near Dwārakā in Saurashtra, mentions that it was a sila-lashṭi (Sanskrit,
śilā-yashṭi), raised as a memorial to a person who had sacrificed his life for the sake of
his friend. The monuments at Andhau and Mūlavāsara were raised by private individuals
in memory of their relatives, and are in the form of long narrow slabs. They cannot
be taken to be in the standard form of a yashṭi. The Sui-Vihāra copper-plate inscription,
dated in the 11th regnal year of Kanishka, mentions that a yaṭhi was raised (in memory)
of the Bhikshu Nāgadatta. Dr. Sten Konow takes yaṭhi in the sense of ‘a staff .’5 The
Sanskrit word yashṭi is also known to occur in the form vala-yashṭi in the Bhumarā pillar
inscription of the Mahārājas Hastin and Śarvanātha.⁶ That record is incised on one of the
faces of a small sand-stone pillar. Fleet translated vala-yashṭi ( which he took to be mistake
for valaya-yashṭi) by ‘a boundary pillar’. A similar word, bala-yashṭi, occurs also in a pillar
inscription of Skandagupta, discovered by Dr. Chhabra at Supia in the former Rewa
State.⁷ The present inscription which calls the pillar at Ēraṇ yashṭi, indicates for the first
time the standard form of a memorial pillar, as distinguished from a victory pillar (jayastambha or raṇa-stambha) or a flag-staff (dhvaja-stambha). 1 At the top of the lower octagonal part above the centre of the inscription is
engraved the word
Rāyā in very bold characters of the same type as those of the present inscription, probably to indicate
that the erection of the pillar had the sanction of the king.
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