North Indian Inscriptions

ADDITIONAL INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SILAHARAS

titles such as ‘(he) who has obtained the five mahāśabdas’ —while [the King] is governing the entire Kōṅkaṇa country headed by Purī together with all maṇḍalas conquered by his own arm, and while. . . is shouldering all cares of administering the whole kingdom entrusted to him by his favour [1]. . . .

No. 63
NANDUI STONE INSCRIPTION OF APARĀDITYA II : ŚAKA YEAR 1119

..THE stone bearing this inscription is said to have been found at Nandui, about twelve miles south-west of Vāḍā in the Ṭhāṇā District of North Koṅkaṇ. It was later removed to the double-storeyed rest-house at Māṇikpur near Bassein. It has now been preserved in the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay.

..“The stone is a trap slap, 5’ 2” (157.48 cm.) long, 2’ 6” (76.20 cm.) broad, and 6” (15.24 cm.) thick. At the top are on either side the sun and the moon, and in the middle, the figure of an ascetic, about a foot (30.48 cm.) high sitting with folded hands and crossed legs. A drinking vessel hangs from his left shoulder. Below the figure is an inscription in sixteen lines, occupying a space 1’ 8” (50.80 cm.) long by 2’ 6” broad. . . . The inscription has suffered from time and is hard to make out. . . . Below the inscription is the ass-curse [2].”

..The inscription has been briefly referred to in the Bombay Gazetteer (old ed.), Vol. I, part ii, p. 387. It was edited without a facsimile or a translation by Dr. M. G. Dikshit in his Select Inscriptions from Mahārāshṭra (5th to 12th cen. A.D.) (Marathi), pp. 81 f. under the title of the Māṇikpur Stone Inscription. It has been edited here from a good estampage supplied by the Curator of the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay

.. The characters are of the Nāgarī alphabet. The following peculiarities may be noted:— The initial i still retains its old form of a curve above two dots ; see it-yādi, line 10; dh has not yet developed a horn on the left; see-samudr-ādhipati, line 6; b has a square form in-mahāśabda, line 3; and h has developed a tail; see-mah-ōdadhi, line 5. The language is Sanskrit and except for the benedictory verse at the end, the whole record is in prose. As regards orthography, we may note the use of v for b as in vahubhir-, line 14, of s for ś as in Saka, line 1, and the reduplication of the consonant following r as in –chakravarttī, line 7. The writer has committed a blunder in recording the date. He has used navati for ēkōnaviṁśati in line 1.

.. The inscription refers itself to the reign of the Sēlahāra (Śilāhāra) king Aparāditya, who, as shown below, was the second king of that name ruling over North Koṅkaṇ. He bears some of the birudas noticed in his other inscriptions including Mahārājādhirāja and kōṅkaṇḍachakravartī, besides some new ones such as Paśchima-samudr-ādhipati and Mah-āji-mārtaṇḍa [ 3] His Mahāmātya was Amuka, [4] and the Chief of the Secretariat, Sāhāmalla. Usually, the inscriptions of the Northern Śilāhāras mention two Treasury Officers (Chhēpāṭīs), but this one mentions as many as four, though it does not give their personal names.

..The object of the present inscription is to record the donation of the village Sātuli [5]
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[1] The subsequent portion of this record is illegible.
[2] Bom. Gaz., (old ed.), Vol. XIV, p. 387.
[3] Dikshit read this biruda as pratāpa-dīpti-mārtaṇḍa, but the estampage shows it as given above.
[4] Dikshit read this name as Lakshmaṇanāyaka, who is mentioned in the Thāṇā inscription of Śaka 1107 (No. 31, above). The editor of the Bom. Gaz. (old ed.), Vol. XIV, gives it as Amuka which is more likely. He is mentioned as Dvitīya-sthēpādī in No. 32.
[5] Bom. Gaz. gives the name as above and it has been adopted by Dikshit, but the stone is much abraded there. It is not clear whether the whole village or a field in it was donated. Dikshit read kshetra (a field) in line 13, but the estampage is not clear there.