|
The Indian Analyst
|
North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SILAHARAS OF KOLHAPUR
thesvara, looking beautiful with extensive canopies and extraordinarily pleasing with excellent merchants’ quarters, with courtezans’ houses on both sides, with a large mānastambha, with a storeyed house, having doors which had acquired beauty through gold (platings). ..(V. 12). The Jina-mandira is like the heap of the merit which Nimbadēva of pure fame has earned, its very unique and beautiful golden kalaśa is like the pinnacle of his greatness, and in the dance-hall, door to door, are numerous statues which stand as if to give boons to those who look and seek. ..(V. 13). Thinking that this new and extensive mandāra tree (i.e. the temple) is most worshipworthy on earth, Śakra (i.e. Indra) has come down forgetting his paradise, and is dancing ostentatiously on the best and extensive kumuda. ..(Line 10). Casting off her feminine form, (the goddess) Sarasatī (i.e. Sarasvatī ), (who) is wont to reside now in the facile writing instrument in the hand of Barevarāditya (lit. the Sun among the writers), having obtained the letters and words (from him), sends forth her great splendour.
No. 51 : PLATE CV .. THE stone bearing this inscription was kept in the Pañchāyat Office at Jugul, a village in the Beḷgaon District of the Karanāṭak State. It has been very briefly noticed in the Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy for 1953-54 No. 178, p. 35. It is edited here from an estampage kindly supplied by the Chief Epigraphist.
.. The present extant record is a small fragment of the original, which must have been about two meters in breadth. Its height cannot be determined now. The existing inscribed portion measures 50 cm. in breadth and 12 cm. in height. It is the right-hand fragment of the original record and consists of six lines only, of which the last one is only 21 cm. in length. .. The characters are of the Kannaḍa alphabet, regular for the period to which the record refers itself. The language is a mixture of Sanskrit and Kannaḍa. The initial portion containing the genealogy of the reigning Śilāhāra king is in Sanskrit, and the subsequent portion in prose. which contains his birudas, is in Kannaḍa. The extant fragment contains parts of eight verses, of which the first was evidently in praise of Śiva. The record may have commenced with a short sentence in prose such as Svasti. Namaḥ Śivāya. This was followed by a verse invoking te god’s blessings. Then commences the genealogy of the reigning king, beginning with the mythical progenitor Jīmūtavāhana. The Sanskrit verses in the initial portion are all repeated from earlier records, viz., verses 2 to 7 from the Kolhāpur plates of Gaṇḍarāditya, dated Śaka 1048 (No. 48, above)[1], and verse 8, which also describes the same king’s gifts and fame, from some other grant of his, not yet discovered. It occurs in his eulogy in a record of his grandson Bhōja II (No. 58). This shows that the present fragment formed a part of a stone inscription of Gaṇḍarāditya, though the latter’s name does not actually occur in the preserved portion.
..
The subsequent portion, which, from some expressions in it[2], appears to be in Kannaḍa,
gives only the birudas of the Śilāhāra king Gaṇḍarāditya, known from his other records. As
[1] Verse 8 in the aforementioned Kolhāpur plates describing the king’s mahādānas does not occur here.
In stead of it another verse briefly referring to them and to his fame occurs here. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| > |
|
>
|