North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR

No. 84; PLATE LXVIII
AKALTARA STONE INSCRIPTION OF RATNADEVA II

THIS inscription was first briefly noticed by Dr. D.R. Bhandarkar in the pro- gress Report of the Archæological Survey of Western India for 1903-4, pp. 51-2. His account has been generally followed by R. B. Hiralal in his Inscriptions in the Central Provinces and Berar.^¹ The record is edited here for the first time from the original stone which I examined in situ and from inked estampages taken under my supervision.

The stone which bears this inscription was found at Kōṭgaḍh, a small village, a mile and a half north of Akaltarā, in the Jānjgir tahsil of the Bilaspur District in Madhya Pradesh. It was brought down to Akaltarā by the Malguzar and built into the plinth of the temple of Siddhēśvara Mahādēva in the back-yard of his house at Akaltarā.^²The inscription consists of 19 lines, of which the last is only one-third of the rest in length. The writing covers a space measuring 3' 6” broad and 1’ 5” high. The stone has suffered considerably about the middle of the first three lines at the top and on both the sides of 11. 8-14. Besides, some aksharas here and there have been damaged or rendered illegible by the effects of the weather. In many cases the missing aksharas can, however, be supplied by conjecture or from three other records of the same chief, viz., the Raipur Museum, Kugdā and Ratanpur stone inscriptions³, with which the present inscription has several verses in common. It has thus been possible to restore almost the whole text of the record, except for the maṅgala-ślōkas in the first two lines. Nothing of historical importance has, therefore, been lost.

The characters are Nāgarī. The aksharas are neatly and carefully written and deeply incised. The average size of the letters is .6”. As regards individual letters, attention may be drawn to the initial ṛi in ṛitavaḥ, 1.14, the sign of the guttural nasal ṅ which shows a dot attached to the left limb, as in -mātaṅga-, 1.12, the proper sign for b which occurs only in babhūvur=, 1.2 and the flat-topped ś as in śaila, 1.10. The language is good and correct Sanskrit. Except for the introductory obeisance to Śiva, the record is metrically composed throughout. The verses, of which there are twenty-six, are all numbered. The usual orthographical peculiarities such as the use of v for b and the confusion of the palatal and dental sibilants are noticed here also. The dental nasal has been wrongly used for the annusvāra invatansaḥ, 1.I, -rājahansaḥ, 1.2 and -dhvansa-, 1.9, and for the palatal nasal in panch=āpi, 1.14.

The inscription refers itself to the reign of Ratnadēva II^⁴ of the Kalachuri Dynasty of Ratanpur. The object of it is to record the construction of a temple of Rēvanta and the excavation of a tank, evidently at Kōṭgaḍh, by Vallabharāja, a feudatory chief of Ratnadēva II. The praśasti, as the inscription is called in the last verse, was composed by
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¹ First ed. p. 109; second ed. p. 121.
² Though the present inscription originally belonged to Kōṭgaḍh, I have called it Akaltarā stone inscription in order to distinguish it from another stone inscription, now deposited in the Raipur Museum, which also comes from Kōṭgaḍh.
³ Nos. 85, 87 and 95, below.
⁴ D.R. Bhandarkar (P.R.A.S.W.I. for 1903-4, pp 51-2) and following him, Hiralal (I.C.P.B., second ed., p. 121) refer this inscription to the reign of Pṛithvīdēva II. The former wrongly took pṛithvipati in v.12 to refer to Pṛithvīdēva (II). The word has there only the general sense of 'a king' and refers to Ratnadēva II. Had the inscription been incised during the reign of Pṛithvīdēva II, the genealogy of the Kalachuri rulers, who were the suzerains of Vallabharāja and his ancestors, would have been brought down to that king in the introductory part of the praśasti, while , as shown here, it stops with Ratnadēva II.