|
The Indian Analyst
|
North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA No. 42 ; PLATE XLIII ...THIS inscription is incised on a rectangular stone slab which is now set up above the door-part of a house in front of the Jaina temple at Vidishā, the principal town of a district in Madhya Pradesh. The inscription was discovered very recently, in 1969, and its existence was intimated to me by Shri B. C. Jain, Dy. Director of Archaeology and Museums in the State. The record, which has not been noticed so far, is edited here for the first time from an excellent set of impressions kindly supplied to me, at my request, by the Chief Epigra phist of the Archaeological Survey of India. ...The inscription is fragmentary. It is complete on both the vertical sides and also at the bottom where the last line contains the expressions maṅgalaṁ mahāśrīḥ, usually indicating the completion of a record ; but we have no means to know as to how many lines have been broken away and lost at the top, though this portion appears to have been not small as the inscription is a praśasti, as stated in itself in the last line. The existing portion of the writing measures 126.5 cms. broad by 19 cms. high and consists of nine lines, the last of which is complete and measures 42 cms. in length. The letters in the first two lines of the now existing portion too are completely or partially peeled off, and 11. 3-4, which are completed on both the sides, as stated above, have lost a portion of the stone in the middle, which is calculated to cover about 15 aksharas in each. Besides this, about one-fourth at the end off 11. 6 and 7 and almost one-third in 1.8 are completely obliterated. But even with all this loss, the record is of great importance, as we shall see below. The height of the individual letters is about 1.5 cms. including the signs of the mātrās above. The record is engraved with all due care.
...The characters are of the Nāgarī alphabet. As regards individual letters, attention may be drawn to the form of the short i used in iva in 11. 3 and 6 ; it consists of two hollow squares placed below the other two so as to form a square and the first of the lower ones showing a tail below and the second a hook above ; k, as we find in some other records also, as the first member of a conjunct consonant or with a mātrā attached to it below, often loses its loop ; cf. kshamā- and kuṭila, both in 1.6 ; ṅ has not developed the dot and its end is not curved up ; e.g., in maṅgala-, last line; the slightly different forms of dh and bh may be seen respectively in vidhu- and -vaṁdhura-, both in 1.7, and bhaya and bhrashṭa, both in 1.3 ; the letter r, which has assumed its modern Nāgarī from, as in I, 1.5, is engraved in its wedged from also, as in taru- in the same line, and the ch-like form of this letter can be seen in grāma-, 1.6, indicating that it was in a transitional stage at the time. And lastly, the conjunct ṇṇ is formed so as to resemble ll in utkīrṇṇā, 1.8. ...The language is Sanskrit ; and excepting a sentence recording the donation in 1. 8 and the portion mentioning the date in the end, the existing portion is all in verse, showing 15 stanzas composed in different metres in the classical style and justifying the poet’s own statement about his composition in v. 14. [1] The immediate object of the inscription appears to be to record the construction of a temple of Murāri, probably by king Trailōkyavarman himself or by one of his subordinates, and making some donations to it by him. The date of the record, as given in figures only in the end, is the twelfth tithi of the dark half of Chaitra of the (Vikrama) era 1226. The date cannot be verified. Its equivalents are : Chaitra vadi 12, V. 1216 : [1] For the sake of convenience, the existing is taken here into account for marking the lines and numbering its verses.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| > |
|
>
|