North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF CHANDRAVATI

AJHĀRĪ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF YAŚODHAVALA

No. 64 ; PLATE LXVII
AJHĀRĪ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF YAŚōDHAVALA
[Vikrama] Year 1202

...THE slab on which this record is engraved was discovered in 1910 by the late Pt. Gaurishankar H. Ojha, at the village Ajhārī, [4] situated about 5 kms. south of Piṇḍwāḍā, the principal town of a tehsīl in the Sirōhī District of Rājasthān, and is stated to have been acquired for the Rājputānā Museum, Ajmer, on 31-3-1910. The inscription was briefly noticed in the Annual Report of the Western Circle of the Archaeological Survey of India, for 1910-11, on p. 38; and was subsequently edited, without a lithograph, by R. R. Halder, in his article entitled Yaśōdhavala Paramāra and his Inscriptions, published in the Indian Antiquary, Vol. LVI (1927), pp. 10- 12. It is edited here from my own transcript prepared from an impression kindly supplied by the Curator of the Museum and a set of impressions furnished by the Chief Epigraphist of the Archaeological Survey of India. [5]

...The inscription was very carelessly written, and is also highly worn. It has suffered from 3-4 small abrasions damaging one or two letters here and there and thus it cannot be fully deciphered. The inscribed portion measures 27.5 cms. high by 22 cms. broad, [6] and consists of fourteen lines of writing. The last of the lines show only three letters almost in its middle; and from the traces left, it is possible that some letters which may have been engraved in its initial portion have now disappeared. The average height of the letters ranges between 1.2 and 1.5 cms.

...The language of the record is Sanskrit, containing several mistakes; and it is all in prose. The orthography shows the usual peculiarities of the use of the sign for v to denote b as well, e.g., in vrāhmaṇa, 1. 10; of that of the dental sibilant for the palatal, as in –Yasō- and -vaṁsa-, both in 1. 3, and of the use of the pṛishṭha-mātrā.

...The inscription refers itself to the Mahāmaṇḍalēśvara Yaśōdhavala, and records that his Chief queen Saubhāgyadēvī, born in the Chaulukya family, made a grant of yavu grain from her own jāgīr (bhōga) [7] at Ajahārī, obviously the village of Ajhārī where the inscribed stone was found. The date of the record, as given in figures in 1. 1, is the fourteenth day of the bright half of
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1 Read क्षन्तव्यम्. The following five aksharas cannot be connected with this.
2 These four aksharas are again restored from J. B. B. R. A. S.
3 The intended sense appears to be that ‘as the well has been constructed with dressed stones, there should be no anxiety about any break in it’. ताति may have been wrongly engraved for ताभिः which again is to be corrected to तस्मात्.
[4] The name of this place is differently spelt as Ajahārī, Ajaharī, etc. Its antiquities are described in the A. S. I. R., W. C. for 1905-6, p. 49, where the inscription is not noticed; and this shows that it was found subsequently.
[5] His No. C-2652 of 1968-69.
[6] shri O. P. Sharma, Curator of the Rājputānā Museum, Ajmer, informed me that the dimensions of the stone are entered in the Museum Register as 2’8’’ high by 91/4’’ broad (i.e., 69.85 by 23.5 cms.) The height recorded here indicates that the inscription is on a pillar which shows these dimensions.
[7] This portion has now totally disappeared and is as read by D. R. Bhandarkar in the A. S. I. R., W. C., 1911, p. 38.

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