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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR
No. 90 ; PLATE LXXIII THIS inscription was discovered by Dr. B. Ch. Chhabra, Government Epigraphist for India, in January 1946 at Kōni, a small village on the left bank of the Ārpā, about 10 miles south by east of Bilaspur, the chief town of the Bilaspur District in the Chhattisgarh Division of Madhya Pradesh. The site is described in the following note kindly supplied by Dr. Chhabra:- 'The site of the inscription, with a black granite Śiva-liṅga prominently standing in the centre, lies about ½ mile west of Kōni. At that point the river Ārpā takes a graceful bend towards the south, thus providing an excellent site for a sanctuary. The one that stood here in the 12th century was a Śiva temple, as indicated by the surviving liṅga. The temple is referred to in the inscription by the special designation of the type Śivapañchāyatana. The site consists of a small mound strewn over with brickbats. The protruding bricks had attracted the attention of some villagers who started digging there and lay bare the liṅga, the inscribed slab and a number of sculptures. Among the latter, I saw two images, one of Vishṇu and the other of Sūrya, and a couple of lintels each with a figurine of Gaṇēśa in the centre and some carving on either side.' The record is edited here from an excellent ink impression which I owe to the kindness of the Government Epigraphist.¹ The inscription is incised on a stone measuring 3' 5” broad and 1' 10” high. It consists of 28 lines, each of which is 3' 3. 2” long, except the last one which measures only 1.2” long. The record is in a good state of preservation except in the last three lines where a few aksharas here and there are now damaged. Most of these aksharas can, however, be restored conjecturally from the context as well as from the traces left behind.
Ṭhe characters are Nāgarī. The record is well written and engraved, but both
in writing and engraving a few mistakes have remained unnoticed.² The average size of
the letter is .4”. As shown below, the present inscription was incised only twenty years
after the Sarkhō plates were issued by Ratnadēva II in K. 880, but its characters in some
cases show considerable development over those of the latter record.³ As regards individual
letters, attention may be drawn to the form of the initial i consisting of two curves,
one below the other, which are still unconnected; the upper one is as in the Sarkhō plates,
but the lower one is shaped differently; see iha, 1.12 and idam =, 1.24; initial ē has a from
similar to that of p with this difference that its vertical stroke on the right is not lengthened
below the base; see ētat=, 1.23; medial u is, in some cases, indicated by a curve attached
to the middle of the vertical and turned downwards; see sahasra-dyuti-, 1.26; medial ē
and ō are generally indicated by pṛishṭhamātrās, but in the case of ai and au one of the mātrās
appears on the top ; in such aksharas as ku, kṛī, and krī, k, has an unlooped form; see =ā-
kuṇṭha-, 1.2; -a-sakṛit-, 1.2; and -krīḍā-, 1. 25; subscript g of the conjunct gg appears almost
like n; see-ggāmbhīrya, 1.16; ṅ is still without its dot, see-ōttuṅga-raṅgat-, 1.2; the conjunct
ṇṇ is indistinguishable from ll; see vinirṇṇaya-, 1.17; subscript th is placed horizontally
exactly like subscript chh; see -kar-ōdarasthaṁ, 1.3; dh has developed a horn on the left which
now clearly distinguishes it from v, but it is still without the horizontal stroke at the top
and the two horizontal strokes of dhā are still joined by ‘a bar in the middle; see dharmma-
mūrttih, 1.6 and sudhā-sṛishṭiḥ, 1.10; v and b are written alike in all cases not even excepting 1 This inscription has been edited by me in the Ep. Ind., Vol. XXVII, pp. 276 ff.
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