North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA

No. 58 ; PLATE LVIII
VIDISHĀ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF JAYASIṀHA (II)
[Vikrama] Year 1320

...THIS inscription was discovered and also copied by Dr. D.C. Sircar, who was then the Government Epigraphist, in 1958. Subsequently, it was edited by him, with a lithograph, in his article on ‘Three Paramāra inscriptions’, published in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXV, pp. 137 f. [9] From the same lithograph it is edited here.

...The stone bearing the inscription is now preserved in the Archaeological Museum at Bhilsā, now known as Vidishā, the principal town of a district of the same name in Madhya Pradesh. It is a detached slab, and its find-spot and the circumstances under which it was obtained are not known, though from the mention of Bhillasvāmidēvapura in it, which is Bhilsā itself, it could not have been brought from far and may have been originally set in or in the vicinity of the temple which was broken by the Sultān Iltutmish in his conquest of that place. [10]

... The inscription consists of ten lines of writing, which covers a space about 46 cms. broad by 28 cms. high ; but only the first two lines of it have the full length. The rest of the lines gradually decrease is length till the last one is only 3 cms. long, since all these are engraved towards the proper left side of the space on it, the proper right side being occupied by the representation of the donkey-and-woman motif, referred to in the last three lines of the record. The average height of the aksharas is about 2.5 cms. The letters are neither well formed nor carefully engraved. The record has also suffered a good deal from weather.
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[1] One of the daṇḍas is redundant.
[2] In place of the bracketed akshara, originally र्व्वा was cut and later on corrected.
[3] Originally, a daṇḍa, later on corrected to visarga.
[4] There is a floral design between the double daṇḍas. This stanza is No. 29.
[5] Read पंडित.
[6] As Kielhorn has already remarked, he may have been the same as Gōsē, mentioned as one of the donees in No. 51, 1. 39 ; but in the same grant the name Rājagōśala also appears in 1. 37.
[7] A person with a somewhat similar name (Kānhāka) was the engraver of the Māndhātā grant of Jayasiṁha Jayavarman, of V.S. 1331 ; and Dr. D.C. Sircar identifies them both. But we have no definite evidence to do so.
[8] As in many other cases noted above, sandhi is not observed here.
[9] The other two inscriptions referred to here are edited above, Nos. 17 and 32.
[10] See Briggs, Firishta, Vol. I, pp. 211-12. More probably the stone was set up near the remains of the temple and not in itself.

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