North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA

No. 37 ; PLATE XXXIX
EULOGY OF SUN-GOD COMPOSED BY CHHITTAPA
(Date lost ?)

...THE stone bearing this inscription was found about forty years ago in the ruins at Bhilsā (now known as Vidishā), the chief town of a District of the same name in Madhya Pradesh, and for some years was lying among the antiquities exhibited in the garden of the Dawk Bungalow, forming a sort of open-air Museum at that place. The inscription was very briefly and wrongly noticed in the Quinquennial Administrative Report of the Archaeological Department of the (former) Gwalior State, for the years 1942-46, page 25, where it is said that “it seems to have been a praśasti recording the merits of a distinguished personage, perhaps a king or a minister who is compared to the Sun but whom, very unlike the Sun, Rāhu could not hold in his grip. As the inscription is badly mutilated, its object cannot be made out.” [5]

...In 1953 Dr. D. C. Sircar, who was then the Government Epigraphist for India, happened to inspect the stone and realised the importance of the inscription which, as found by him, was devoted neither to a distinguished personage, nor to a king, but to eulogise the Sun-god ; and his conclusion that the inscribed stone slab originally belonged to the temple of Bhāїlla- or Bhāїlasvāmin at the place appears to be quite sound. [6] From the impressions he prepared there, Dr.
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[1] By mistake, two horizontal strokes instead of one are attached to the vertical of this letter.
[2] This akshara, which was omitted while engraving. is later on written above, at the close of the preceding line, with an arrow-mark to draw attention to it.
[3] Cf. परकुलांगनापुत्र used for the Rāshṭrakūta King Kṛishṇa III in Ep. Ind., Vol. XIX, pp. 289-90.
[4] The punctuation mark is so close to the preceding letter as to appear as a mātrā attached to it. It is also redundant, as some others in lines that follow.
[5] Also see ibid., p. 69. No. 2 where a different statement is made. The same is repeated in Pt. Harihar Nivas Dvivedi’s Gwālior Rājya-kē Abhilēkha (Hindi), which also is a publication of the Gwalior State or Madhya Bhārat. See his No. 666.
[6] Ep. Ind., Vol. XXX. p. 215. The name Bhilsā still retains the memory of the Sun-deity, a temple dedi- cated to whom existed there some time back. See ibid., p. 210. The name Bhāїlla, or Bhāїlla, denoting the local image of the day deity worshipped at the place, appears to have a base in Sanskrit, viz., bhā (lustre) and a Prakrit suffix illa, in the sense of possessor (cf. chaїlla). the whole word signifying ‘one who possesses or is the store-house of lustre’ (cf. bhāskara or prabhākara). मत्वर्थे उल्ल-इल्लौ (Vararuchi’s Prākṛita-Prakāśa).

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