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North
Indian Inscriptions |
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INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA
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No. 30 ; PLATE XXXIII
AMĒRĀ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF NARAVARAMAN [Vikrama] year 1151
...THE stone bearing this inscription was found in 1923-24 in the vicinity of a ruined tank
at Amērā, a small village on the slope of a hill about three kilometres south of
Udaipur in the Bāsōdā parganā of the Vidishā District in Madhya Pradesh. The late
Shri M.B. Garde who discovered the inscription, noticed it in the Annual Report of the
Archaeological Department of the (former) Gwālior State for 1923-24, page 16 and Appendix D. No. 1 ; and his notice thereof appeared also in the Annual Report of the Archaeological
Survey of India for the same year, on page 135. Subsequently, the record was often referred
to because of its historical value in pushing the date of the Paramāra king Naravarman ten years
earlier than it had so far been known ; but it has not been edited or even deciphered so far,
owing, presumably, to its being in a very bad state of preservation coupled with the slovenliness
on the part of the engraver, making a great portion of the record unintelligible. It is edited
here from the original and also from an impression which I owe to the kindness of the Deputy
Superintending Archaeological Survey of India, Central Circle, Bhopal.
[7]
...The record is inscribed on the sunken panel of a sand-stone slab measuring 95.5 cms. high
and 78 cms. broad, with a broad border on all the four sides. The inscribed portion is about
60 cms. high by 53 cms. broad, and consists of 24 lines of writing, which is very crude. The
last of the lines, which is slightly separated from the others by an empty space, is only 7 cms.
long and contains two aksharas appearing as forming a name ; and the line that precedes it is
about three-fourth of the length of the others. The height of the letters varies from 1.2 to
2 cms. ; and the mechanical way is extremely sloven. At several place the letters are irregularly
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[1] Krishnamacharlu read: dvaṁdva-dvaṁdva-, and Ganguly remarked that this expression does not yield
any plausible sense. Ganguly also read the preceding expression as patēuha and observed that between
tē and ha there is no space for two aksharas. The intended reading appears to be given above ; and
I also agree with the editor of the Ep. Ind. who takes it to mean “bowing to the couple (i.e..Śiva and
Pārvatī) destroying the bad qualities (viz., passion and ignorance)”. The word dvandva here means ‘a
couple of opposite conditions or things.’ for which cf. Śiśupāla-vadha, IV. 64.
[2] The reading of the bracketed akshara is doubtful. It may also have been ja ( for jya).
[3] These five aksharas are mutilated and the reading is as suggested by the editor of Ep. Ind . The sign of
anusvāra above the second of them, which appears in the impression, is redundant.
[4] The bracketed letters are badly mutilated and the reading adopted here is only conjectural, so as to fill in
the gap.
[5] All these letters are lost and the reading suggested is -मभ्युच्छ्रितशिखरलसत्पूर्ण्णचन्द्रं.
[6] The impression shows that some letters in the following line are totally lost. leaving traces. they may
have denoted the date.
As some of the letters were indistinct in this impression. I requested the Curator of the Gwālior
Archaeological Museum to kindly provide me with another, and he obliged me by sending an old impression taken several years back. This impression thus helped me in deciphering some more aksharas ,
also indicating that the stone was then is a somewhat better of preservations and was lees abraded
than now.
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