North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF CHANDRAVATI

HĀTHAL COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF DHĀRĀVARSHA

No. 68 ; No PLATE
HĀTHAL COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF DHĀRĀVARSHA
[Vikrama] Year 1237

...THE plates bearing this inscription are stated to have been found at Hāthal or Hathāra a village situated about ten kilometres north-east of Reodhar, the chief town of a Tehsīl in the former Sirōhī State (which is now a district-place) in south-west Rājasthān. They were discovered by Pt. Gauri-Shankar Ojha of the Rājputānā Museum, Ajmer, and from ink-impressions supplied by him, the record was edited by the late Pt. Vishweshwar Nath Shastri in the Indian Antiquary, Volume XLIII (for 1914), page 193 f., giving his own reading of the text but without a facsimile. Nothing about the owner of the plates it mentioned by him or in the Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey, Western Circle, for 1916-17, p. 69, where a reference to the plates is made ; and all any my efforts to trace their whereabouts also failed. And as even a set of impressions is now not forthcoming, I give below a copy of Shastri’s transcript of the record, adding to it my own notes.

... The plates are of copper and two in number. Each of them is inscribed on one side only, and each measures, as recorded in Shastri’s article referred to above, about 6.5” (16.5 cms.) broad by 5.5” (14.0 cms.) high. They are stated to contain a ring-hole but the rings were lost.[3] ]The first plate contains ten lines off writing and the second eleven lines, of which the last line seems to be a post script. [4] With the exception of about two or three letters in 1. 11, the record is fairly legible.

...The characters are Nāgarī of the twelfth century; and the language is Sanskrit, which is incorrect at a number of places. The engraver too has committed a number of errors. The record is in prose, with the exception of three imprecatory verses in the end. The orthography shows the usual peculiarities of the use of v for b, as in vahu for bahu, 1. 15, that of the pṛishṭha-mātrās and of putting sh in Śaiva, 1. 10 and also in sahashra (the latter s) in 1. 18.

...The inscription belongs to the reign of Dhārāvarsha, who is introduced as a lord of Arbuda or the modern mountain Ābū, and a sun for (causing to bloom) the family of Dhūmarāja (11. 2-3), intending to say that he belonged to the lineage of the Paramāras holding sway over the Chandrāvatī region. In 1. 4 he is styled māṇḍalik-āsura-śambhu, i.e. māṇḍalik-ēśvara-śambhu, which evidently shows that he occupied a very high rank among all the feudatories of his overlord, whose name is not mentioned in the record but who was no other than the Chaulukya Bhīmadēva II (1179-1241 A.C.) when the present record was inscribed, as we shall presently see.

...The object of the inscription is to record the royal gift (śāsan-āksharāṇi) by Kāvida, or Kōvida, the keeper of the seals and thus a high administrative officer, to the effect that Bhaṭṭāraka Vīsala Udagradamaka, the supreme āchārya of Śaivism, was permitted to graze his cattle
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[1] This and the following line are in vernacular.
[2] The daṇḍas are redundant. The preceding verse is corrupt.
[3] As stated bu Shastri in Ind. Ant., Vol. XLIII. p. 193.
[4] In ibid., Shastri observed that “the letters in this line differ widely from the others.”

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