North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA

in his Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. II, pp. 297-314. His reading of the text was amended at various place, by F. E. Hall, in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol, VII, pp. 36 ff., and in 1890 all the three inscriptions were re-edited by F. Kielhorn, in the Indian Antiquary, Vol. XIX (1890), pp. 345 ff., with transcripts in Roman characters but without facsimiles. The plates are now in the British Museum, London, and the present inscription is edited here on the basis of my own reading of the text prepared from a photograph thereof which was kindly procured and supplied to me, at my request, by Dr. G.S. Gai, the Chief Epigraphist of the Archaeological Survey of India, to whom my thankfulness is due.

... It is a copper-plate, the first of apparently the two which bore the whole inscription, and measures about 27.62 cms. by 21.90 cms. Its edges were raised into rims to protect the writing. It weights 0.91 kgms. It has two circular holes bored at the bottom, disturbing the writing in the last line, for rings to pass through so as to hold it with the second plate, which has never been discovered, along with the rings. The size of the indivisual letters is about .8 cms. They are carefully written and well engraved but contain occasional redundant strokes and omission of some of their parts, as will be pointed out below. The whole of the extant writing, however, can be made out with certainty. It contains sixteen lines.

... This inscription is written in the Nāgarī alphabet of the twelfth century A.C. To mention some of its outstanding features, we find that the initial i, unlike that in the preceding one, is represented by two hollow dots horizontally placed and subscribed by the mātrā of u showing a fine curve, as in iti, 1. 14 ; the initial u occurs only once, in 1. 4, where its formation may be noted ; and the medial u in bhyu, 1. 1, is altogether different from that which appears throughout the record. The conjunct consonant gg is engraved as gn in sarggāya, 1.1. Of the forms of the other consonants, we note that the letters t and bh are almost alike ; cf. bhyu and ti, both in 1. 1 ; the short slanting stroke which indicates the final consonant has been engraved as the sign for a subscript r, but it is straight and not slanting ; see m in tām and kṛitim, both in 1.2 ; but there is a singular exception to this in 1. 8, where the n of purushān is engraved as nū. The slight difference in the formation of r may be noted in rāja, purushān and rājya, all side by side in 1. 8, indicating that the letter was then in a transitional stage.

...The language of the inscription is Sanskrit ; and, with the exception of two invocatory verses in 11. 1-3 and two customary verses in 11. 11-14, the whole of the extant portion of the record is in prose. The orthographical peculiarities are almost the same as to be found in the inscriptions of the time, viz., (1) denoting b by the sign for v, throughout ; e.g. in vibhartti, 1.1; (2) writing of s for ś only in a singular example in vinasvaraṁ, 1. 14 ; (3) doubling of a consonant following r ; cf. sarggāya, 1. 1 ; and (4) the use of the sign of anusvāra for the consonant m, only in one instance at the end of a verse in 1. 14, whereas m is correctly used in all the three instances where it occurs at the end of a hemistich, twice in 1. 2 and once in 1. 14 ; (5) the sign for avagraha is employed twice in 1. 1, to indicate both the times the merging of a into ō ; and (6) the pṛishṭha-mātrā appears six times in all–– three times to denote the medial ē (in 11. 4, 5 and 13), and as a component of the mātrā of each of the other dipthongs in 11. 10, 12 and 1, respectively. Attention may also be drawn to the spelling of shaṭ-tṛiṁśat, 1.8, as shaṭ-truṁśat, and of tṛiṇāgra, 1.12, as truṇāgra. It may also be noted here that the writing contains some redundant chisel strokes, e.g. the first letter in Vyōma, 1.1, has also the ī-mātrā above the top-stroke ; vaḥ in 1. 2 is carved as taḥ ; and kālaṁ in 1. 15 is engraved as kārla, as the sign for anusvāra is not fully engraved. Examples of omitting the parts of letters in the process of engraving are to be seen in smara, 1.2 and snātvā, 1. 10, where the upper part of the left limb of s remains uncarved ; and the second and the fourth letters in sama- bhyarchchya, 1. 10 and ṇṇ in -rṇṇava, 1. 15 are not properly engraved.

... As in the case of many Paramāra grants, the inscription opens with Om svasti and Śrīr=jjayō=bhyudayaś=cha, followed by two verses in Anushṭubh, in praise of Śiva. It then gives the genealogy of the house of the Paramāras, mentioning the names of Udayāditya, Naravarman, Yaśōvarman and Jayavarman, in succession, and each of these with the epithets of Paramabhaṭṭāraka, Mahārājādhirāja and Paramēśvara ( 11. 4-7). The relationship of the first three of these princes, from father to son, is known from the records edited above, and the present inscription which only adds to our knowledge by mentioning Jayavarman as the successor of Yaśōvarman, is however silent about their mutual relationship. The Pipliānagar

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