No. 63 ; PLATE LXVI
BHĀḌŪṆḌ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF PŪRṆAPĀLA
[Vikrama] Year 1102

...THE stone on which this record is incised is built in the inner wall of an old stepped well at the tiny hamlet of the name of Bhāḍūṇḍ, also spelt as Bhārūṇḍ, in the Bālī tehsīl of the District of Pālī in Rājasthān.[10] The inscription was briefly noticed in the Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, Western Circle, for the year ending March, 1908, p. 7 (No. 2351) and 50 ; and subsequently it was edited in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume XXIII (1914), pages 75 ff., by Rāmakarṇa, with his own reading of the text, in Nāgarī, on pp. 78-80, but without an illustration. The inscription is edited here from personal examination and fresh estampages supplied to me, at my request, by the Superintending Archaeologist of the Western Circle, Baroda.

... The inscription, which is on an oblong slab, consists of fifteen lines of writing, covering a space about 100 cms. broad by 31 cms. high. The stone has vertically broken into two parts of unequal size ; and the part of it on the left has slightly swerved from its original position, with the result that the lines of the record do not now run straight as they originally did. This break must have taken place before 1914, when Rāmakarṇa published, his article in that year, as he refers to it. But after he wrote, the stone has again suffered severely, in consequence of some peelings on its surface, which are on the left side, losings a large portion of the writing, so much so that in some three or four instances I had to restore my reading of the text from Rāmakarṇa’s transcript.

... The inscription is written in the Nāgarī characters of the eleventh century. The initial a begins with an almost vertical stroke joined to the top-stroke, and occasionally the curve below is not engraved, making it appear as the Nāgarī ma, e.g., in achala, 1. 9, which was actually read
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[1] Sandhi is not made between कृत्यौ and श्र्पर्थं for the sake of the matre. The reading of त्य is doubtful. Both these are in gender, but they are put here in the masculine.
[2] There is no doubt about the reading. Kielhorn read : [प]रु(पुर)तो.
[3] Wrong for व्योम्नि or व्योमनि for the metre. यावद् व्योम्नि स्यदेन would give the same sense and also suit the metre.
[4] Wrong for श्र्पासाताम् The reading एतौ स्थौष्ठौ भवेताम् would remove the error.
[5] After the punctuation marks, is engraved a figure resembling conch-shell.
[6] The name of the queen is written here with (the dental) n.
[7] Wrong for उत्कीर्ण्णा.
[8] An ornamental pattern appears here.
[9] The figure of a conch-shell appears at the end. Delete the daṇḍas after the third foot.
[10] Bhāḍūṇḍ, which is now known as Bhaṇḍāra, is situated about 2 kilometres north of Nāṇā, which is a station on the Ajmer-Ahmedabad line of the Western Railway. Formerly it was in the Sirōhī State but now it is included in the district of Pālī, as mentioned here. It is a corrupt from of Bhuṇḍipadra, as to be seen below, while identifying the places mentioned in it. In my visit to the place I found the inscription slab imbedded in the middle of the left-side wall of the stepped well there.

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