North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA

the Government Epigraphist, in his epigraphical tour in the season of 1959-60 and was noticed in the Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy for the year, as No. B-253. The same scholar edited the inscription in the Epigraphia India, Volume XXXV, p. 186. It is edited here from an impression supplied by the Chief Epigraphist.

...The record is damaged and contains only four lines of writing in the form of a trapezium, of which the top side is longer than its parallel side. The length of the first line is 26 cms., and of the last, which ends in about half of its complete measurement, is about 10 cms.

...The characters are Nāgarī of the eleventh or twelfth century A.D. and the language is Sanskrit. The record is composed in prose and verse, there being only one stanza in the Anushṭubh metre. The letters are neither properly shaped nor carved with due care. The height of an individual letter is 1.2 cms. With reference to ōrthography, we may note the use of the dental for the palatal sibilant in śrēshṭhī and the general use of the urdhva-matra to denote the medial e and o occurring in it.

...The inscription commences with the mention of the year, Saṁvat 1157, corresponding to 1100-01 A.C. No details of the year are mentioned. Following this, there is reference to sāmrājya (i.e., sovereignty or dominions) of Naravarman, who is evidently to be taken the Paramāra king of that name whose known dates range from Vikrama 1151 (1094 A.C.) to 1190 (1133 A.C.). Then is recorded the object, viz., the installation of two images of Tīrthaṅkaras by Chillaṇa who was a son of Śreshṭhin Rāma and a grandson of Nēmichandra. We have no details in this respect too.

... The record does not contain any geographical name.

TEXT[1]

No. 33 ; PLATE XXXV
NAGPUR MESEUM STONE INSCRIPTION OF NARAVARMAN
[Vikrama] Year 1161

....THIS inscription was first edited and translated into English, in 1843, by the late Bāl Gaṅgādhar Śāstrī, in the journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume I, pages 259 ff., and was re-edited, with a German translation, by Prof. Lassen, in Zeitschrift d. Deutsch. Morg. Ges., Volume VII, pages 194 ff. It was again edited, in 1894, by Prof. F. Kielhorn, in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. II, pp. 180 ff., with text in Nāgarī characters (pp. 182-88) and a fresh English translation (pp. 189-95), but without a facsimile, from estampages supplied to him by Dr. Fleet and Dr. Burgess. Kielhorn has rightly stated that “for the proper understanding of some really difficult verses more help may be derived from the English,
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[1] From an impression supplied by the Chief Epigraphist.
[2] The horizontal bar of ma has a redundant chisel stroke, making the letter appear to be probably mva. Sircar read it as saṁ[va]t.
[3] This mark of punctuation is indicated by a visarga-like sign. – D.C.S.
[4] The reading of this and the preceding letter is doubtful, as of some others too.
[5] Sircar read: k-ānvaya(yē), followed by a daṇḍa; but it is not necessary if we take the daṇḍa to be superfluous and read it as a compound word.
[6] The intended reading may be मुनिसुप्रिय: (D.C.S.)
[7] A wrong chisel stroke has made this letter look like ta.
[8] A faint trace below ya shows that the original has an ū-mātrā, which has not come out in the impression.

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