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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF CHANDRAVATI DHĀNTĀ IMAGE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF SOMASIṀHA tion, with a facsimile, in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 209 ff. It is edited here from the facsimile accompanying his article. Later on, I have also revised the text from an impression which I owe to the Chief Epigraphist. ...The record, which is incised on the pedestal of a statue of the goddess Mahishāsura-mardinī, called Jōgmāyā, [1] consists of four lines of writing, which covers a space 36.5 cms. wide by 7 cms. high. The letters are very badly incised and the stone is very much worse for weather action. The fourth line is almost totally lost and the penultimate line has some of the aksharas damaged or partly lost. The script in which the record is written is Nāgarī of the thirteenth century A.C. Noteworthy is the form of dh in Dhāṇatā- in 1. 1, with the developed horn on its left limb and devoid of the top-stroke. The verticals of this akshara are also joined by a horizontal stroke. The medial dipthongs are indicated by the śirō-mātrās, which were current at the time to which the record belongs. The language is Sanskrit and the inscription is throughout in prose. The orthography does not call for any remark except that the name of the month Māgha is written as Māha in 1. 1. ...The object of the inscription is to record the installation of the image, on the pedestal of which it is engraved, during the victorious reign of Sōmasiṁha, ruling at Chandrāvati. The inscription is dated in the year 1277 (expressed in decimal figures only) of an unspecified era, which, of course, must be referred to the Vikrama era. The day was Monday, the second of the bright half of Māgha ; and as calculated by Suri himself, the corresponding Christian date is 28th December, 1221 A.C. [2] The year would be Kārttikādi Vikrama expired. ... The dynastic name of the king or any title attached to his name is not mentioned in the record, but the statement that he was ruling at Chandrāvatī and the provenance of the inscription leave no room for doubt that he belonged to the Paramāra dynasty ruling at the place during the time of the present inscription. Thus he appears to be identical with the son of Dhārāvarsha, mentioned in the Mt. Ābū inscription of V. 1287. [3]
... The last known date of Dhārāvarsha is Śrāvaṇa-śudi 3, V. 1276, as furnished by the Makāval stone inscription, [4] and the present record, which is dated Māgha-śudi 2, V. 1277, shows that Dhārāvarsha was succeeded by son Sōmasiṁha during this short period. Another Mt. Ābū inscription of V.S. 1265 (1208 A.C.) informs us that Prahlādana was the heir-apparent of his brother Dhārāvarsha, [5] and the Sōmasaubhāgya, a work of the latter half of the fifteen century A.C., mentions the former of these rulers as the lord of Arbudāchala. [6] And if in the light of these statements it be held that Dhārāvarsha was succeeded by his brother Pralādana, and he by his nephew Sōmasiṁha, the interval of eighteen months, shown by the two inscriptions referred to above, becomes still shorter. But the inscription supplied by the two sources is of a dubious nature. The statement of the Mt. Ābū inscription, viz., that Prahlādana was the heir-apparent of Dhārāvarsha does not necessarily show that the latter was succeeded by the former, whom he might have predeceased, and what is recorded in a late work composed in the latter half of the fifteenth century A.C. cannot have any force in it for want of a corroborative evidence. It is however, possible that Prahlādana may have been entrusted by his brother with some work in administration and thus he may have been mentioned as the lord of Arbudāchala in the Sōmasaubhāgya. ...The present record is therefore important as it furnishes the earliest date for the accession of Sōmasiṁha. His latest known date is borne by the Dēvkhētar inscription, as we shall see while dealing with that record. [7] ...Beginning with the date and referring to the reign of the king Sōmasiṁha, as discussed
above, the inscription contains as expression Śrī-S[ī]gāradēvī –kālē the full significance of which
cannot be made out as the two important aksharas are lost in it. I agree with Shri. Suri in
[1] In his article Shri Suri also states that the image which is made of marble stone is now broken into two
pieces and stands on a platform near a well called Pāḍarlā arhaṭ
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