North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF CHANDRAVATI

AJHĀRĪ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF DHĀRĀVARSHA

TEXT [1]

No. 70 ; PLATE LXXII
AJHĀRĪ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF DHĀRĀVARSHA
[Vikrama] Year 1240

...THE stone bearing this inscription was found, in 1910-11, at Ajhāri a village about 5 kms. south of Piṇḍwāḍā, the headquarters of a tehsīl in the Sirohī District of Rājasthān, by Pt. Gaurishankar Ojha, who removed it to the Rājputānā Museum, Ajmer. The record was briefly noticed in the Annual Report of the Western Circle of the Archaeological Survey of India, for the same year, on p. 38. A transcript of it also appeared in the Gaekwad Oriental Series Publication No. 4. [7] It is edited here from an impression kindly supplied to me, at my request, by the Curator of the Rājputānā Museum.

...The inscription consists of eleven lines of writing and covers a space measuring 24 cms. high by 31 cms. broad. Letters in the last of the lines have totally disappred, leaving a few traces here and there, and in the penultimate three lines they are partly visible, giving no coherent sense. In the rest of the lines also a number of them have been rubbed off or mutilated. The average size of the letters is about 1 cm.

... The script belongs to the twelfth century A.C. The vowel i retains its old form, as in Aϊchāü in 1. 4, and the loop of the consonant ch is triangular, as in the same word. The language is Sanskrit, with some words in their Prakrit form, e.g. samēϊ in 1.7, rāṇī (for rājñī) in 1. 3, and the name of the queen is spelt as Sīṅgāradēvī in the same line. Vaiśākha is spelt as Vaiśāsha in 1.1,

...The inscription commences with the date Saṁvat 1240 Vaiśākha śu di 3, Sōmē, which corresponds to Monday, the 28th of March, 1183 A.C. The month of this date was inter-
___________________________________________________

[1] From impressions.
[2] This akshara appears also as दी but the curve at the top is not clearly marked.
[3] The reading of the consonant of the first akshara is not certain; it also appears somewhat like j: and the second akshara may also have been ḍa or da. or even ha without the curve on the left of the lower part thereof.
[4] The significance of this akshara cannot be ascertained. If the word is a corrupt form of sādhanika in the sense of a military officer, for which see above No. 60, text 1. 87 and n. on it in the edition of the inscription, the letters sāiṇa would be left without any meaning. Should it be read as साजण  ?
[5] The text is corrupt here and full of local words. Majhu is probably a corruption of madhyē, i.e. in the midst of: and vāgaḍa means a line of demarcation, quite distinct from the word Vāgaḍa which denoted the region of Bāṅswāḍā in those times, Both these words are still prevalent in this sense in Rājasthān; and the practice current even to-day in that region is to mark the separate plots of land by a fallow land on which small stone figures of a cow are set. The land for the Brāhmaṇas in this particular instance may have been marked by such devices from that to be used by the people of some other castes. cf. C. I. I.,Vol. IV, No. 31, 1. 56,
[6] Read मभ्तस्या
[7] Pārthaparākrama. appx. II. p. 27.

Home Page