North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA

No. 56 ; PLATE LV
MōḌĪ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF JAYAVARMADĒVA (II)
[ Vikrama ] Year 1314

... THIS inscription was found at Mōḍī, a village about 12 kms. west of Bhānpurā, the chief town of a tehsīl in the Mandsaur District of Madhya Pradesh. It was first brought to notice by D. R. Bhandarkar in his Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, Western Circle, for 1912-13, p. 56, where it is stated to have been broken into four pieces “lying uncared for in the Town Hall at Indore.” It was again referred to in the Report of the same Circle for 1919-20, by R. D. Banerji, who described in it the remains of a group of temples at that place, one of them, as remarked by him, “must have been one of the finest mediaeval shrines of Malwa”, [10] and he also stated that the inscription was found in the vicinity of this group of temples.

... From the records of the former State of Indore in which the find-spot of the inscription was then included, as also from those of the Indore Museum, I could gather that the inscribed stone was brought to Indore in 1905 by the then Prime Minister of the State, Rai Bahadur Nanakchand, who deposited it in the Town Hall at that place, from where it was taken in its fragmentary condition to the General Library at Indore, and from there two of the four fragments were removed to the Museum, in 1929, and the fate of the remaining two pieces was unknown. An attempt to recover the other broken parts of the inscription was all futile ; and during this repeated transit, in which two of the pieces were altogether lost, the other two which are now preserved in the Museum have also suffered, losing some lines above and a number of aksharas on the pieces on either of the vertical sides all through, in consequence of the flaking off of their parts ; and there are also abrasions and indentations, causing some difficulty to make out a coherent sense. This may probably be the reason why this important inscription remained unedited so long, though often referred to [11] ; and it is edited here for the first time from the text
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[1] From impressions Government Epigraphist No. C-2808 of 1968-69. Just above the first line two symbols or letters are engraved in the middle but I am unable to explain them.
[2] For the explanation of this expression, see above.
[3] Read नारायणाय.
[4] Read -ग्रामः . . . प्रदत्तः.. The akshara grā is written above the line.
[5] Used for यो.
[6] The verb should be in the future tense.
[7] Read this word in the accusative.
[8] In his List of Inscriptions of N. India, D. R. Bhandarkar remarked that the century figure seems to be omitted. The impressions before me show that this figure was at first engraved as 4 and later on changed to 3. The last two figures have now disappeared and have been adopted from Bhandarkar’s reading.
[9] Bhandarkar, in I. N. I., No. 554, read this word as vashaї (varshē). but out of the two strokes above the second of these aksharas, the first is clearly for the mātrā and the second seems to have been intended for the rēpha. Following them. there are traces as of a letter which has now disappeared.
[10] Page. 94.
[11] For example, in D. C. Ganguly’s H. P. D. ; H. C. Ray and the other writers on the history of the Paramāra dynasty have also referred to it.

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