North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF VAGADA

No. 86 ; PLATE LXXXVII – A
ARTHŪṆĀ STONE INSCRIPTION OF THE TIME OF CHĀMUṆḌARĀJA
[Vikrama] Year 1159

...THE stone bearing this inscription is stated to have been found in a ruined Jaina temple at Arthūṇā, situated about nine kms. straight south-southwest of Gaḍhī, the chief town of a tehsīl of the Bāṅswāḍā District of the southernmost region of Rājasthān. The ruins of old temples existing there and the discovery of the inscription edited above go to indicate that the place was of considerable importance in former times. The inscription was first brought to notice by Gaurishankar H. Ojha of the Rājputānā Museum, Ajmer, in the Annual Report of the Museum, for 1914-15, p. 2, where it is stated that the record “is much defaced”. The record was also published in Śrī Vēṅkaṭēśwara University Oriental Journal, Vol. X, pp. 65 ff., and Plate. It is edited here for the first time from an impression provided to me, at my request, by Shri Om Prakash Sharma, the Curator of the Museum where the stone is now deposited.[1]

... The inscription consists of fourteen imperfect lines of writing, which measures, as original. 35-5 cms. broad by 17 cms. high. It is in a very poor state of preservation, the stone being unfortunately broken on the right and losing about one-third thereof on this side. The break is irregular; it commences at the end of the second line, and gradually increasing to about 12.5 cms. in 11. 7 to 9, it decreases again to about 4 cms. in 11. 10-11. The next line, which is the penultimate line of the inscription, has again lost its latter half, along with a portion of the last line, about the total length of which nothing can be said with certainty. In addition to this, about 5 letters in the middle of 11. 7-8 have left only indistinct traces and almost an equal number of them are altogether lost at the commencement of 1. 9. Thus the inscription cannot be wholly deciphered. It can confidently be stated, however, that it was written and incised very carefully. The size of the letters is about .6 cms., except of those in 11. 6.8 where they are slightly bigger.

... The characters belong to the Nāgarī alphabet, closely resembling those of the preceding records, found at the same place. The only points that call for attention are that ś has a distinct form of its own as in śuchi-, 1. 9; that t does not end in a sharp tail and thus it is often comfounded with n, e. g., in punāti, 1. 2, and -ttataḥ, 1. 5; that the slightly varying forms of bh are to be noted in Vṛishabha-, 1. 1, and subhaga-, 1. 10; and that s is often incised with the tail of its forelimb so as to resemble m, for which cf, sujana-, 1. 2, and sata-, 1. 8. The final consonants are occasionally not marked, e.g., in imām and saṁvat, both in the last line as against jayēt in 1. 11.

...The language is Sanskrit, almost correct; and except for the mention of the year in the end, what remains of the record is all in verse, containing. 13 stanzas, which are not numbered. The inscription has not lost anything in the beginning. The orthography calls for the only usual remarks, e.g., the use of the sign for v to denote b also, as in vivudha-, 1. 1; of the dental s for the palatal ś, occasionally, e.g., in sāsati, 1. 7 but not in diśatu, 1. 1; and the reduplication of a consonant following r, as in kīrtti, occurring twice in 1. 3. The doubling of t in kṛittya, 1. 13, is also worth noting. The pṛishṭha-mātrās are used,

...The inscription is sectarian; and its object is to record the construction of a temple, evidently the one where the slab bearing it was found, by one Sahaja born in a Nāgara family, during the reign of the illustrious Chāmuṇḍarāja. The year is mentioned in figures in v. 7, to be 1159,[2] without further particulars; and as current of the Northern Vikrama era, it corresponds to 1101 A.C.
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[1] I have also had another impression of the inscription supplied by Shri R. S. Garg, the Curator of the Indore Museum where it was obtained several years back and probably taken the stone was found and taken to the Ajmer Museum, This excellent impression, which is reproduced here, was helpful to me in settling some disputable points in my reading; and due to the kindness of the Director-General of Archaeology in India who sanctioned my tour, I also revised my reading from the original, in my visit to the Rājputānā Museum, Ajmer, where the stone is now deposited.
[2] See n. on 1. 8 in the text below.

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