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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR NO. 98 ; PLATE LXXX THE stone which bears this inscription is built into the plinth of the temple of Chandra-chūḍēśvara which stands in close vicinity to that of Nārāyaṇa in Shēorinārāyaṇ, a well-known place of pilgrimage on the left bank of the Mahānadī, 38 miles south-east of Bilaspur in the Jānjgir tahsil of the Bilaspur District in Madhya Pradesh. The date of the inscription has been known for a long time from a photozincograph published in Sir A. Cunningham's Archæological Survey of India Reports, Vol. XVII, plate xx. A brief and somewhat imperfect account of it was published by Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar in the Progress Report of the Archæological Survey of Western India for 1903-04, pp. 52-53, which has been followed by Rai Bahadur Hiralal in his Inscriptions in the C. P. and Berar.¹ The inscription is edited here for the first time from the original stone which I examined in situ and from estampages taken under my direction. The inscription contains 27 lines. The writing covers a space 3' 5” broad and 1' 8½” high, but nearly half the portion on the proper left in 11. 2-17 has been completely lost owing to the peeling off of the surface of the stone. The Mahant of Shēorinārāyaṇ possesses a sort of transcript of the inscription which was made when the stone was less damaged, but it is too full of mistakes to be of any use in the restoration of the lost portion. The letters are well-formed, carefully written and deeply incised. Their size varies from .3” to .5”. In two places the aksharas which were at first omitted are written below the line; see ya in prīṇayatō=, 1. 15 and gān in =bhōgān, 1.20 ; and in one place a wrong akshara is cancelled by incising two vertical strokes on the top. The characters are Nāgarī. They closely resemble those of the Ratnapur inscription of Pṛithvēva II, dated K. 915,² except that ṅ appears here with a dot in some places. (e. g., in Kaliṅgarājō, 1.4 ) and without it in others (e. g., in -bhṛiṅg-āṅganā-, 1.23). The language is Sanskrit. Except for the obeisance to Śiva in the first line and the date and the customary pious wish for the well-being of the world in the last, the record is metrically composed throughout. It contains 45 verses, all of which are numbered. The orthography shows the usual peculiarities of the use of v for b and the confusion of the dental s and the palatal ś. In śrēyānsi 1.1, the anusvāra is wrongly changed to n, and in pancha 1. 3 and Virinch-ānana- 1.26, nch wrongly takes the place of ñch.
The praśasti was composed as well as written by Kumārapāla. Who describes himself as an excellent Kshatriya and a descendant of Sahasrārjuna. He figures as scribe in some other inscriptions³ also. The engraver was Chhītuka by name. The present record is dated in the Chēdi year 919 (expressed in decimal figures only). The date does not admit of verification for want of the necessary details, but the year, if expired, would correspond to 1167-68 A. C.
The inscription belongs to the reign of Jājalladēva II of the Kalachuri Dynasty of
Ratanpur. The immediate object of it seems to be to record the donation of the village
Chiñchēlī by Āmaṇadēva, a descendant of a collateral branch of the Kalachuri dynasty, for
the purpose of defraying the expenses of incense, lights and other materials for the worship
of the god Chandrachūḍa and the erection of a temple of Durgā in front of the shrine (of 1 Second ed., p. 122.
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