North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SILAHARAS OF NORTH KONKAN

..(Line 69)—Therefore, none should cause any obstruction while he with his descendants and relatives is enjoying them or allowing others to enjoy them. For, it has been said by great sages:—

..(Here follow three verses stating the importance of preserving gifts.)

..(Line 74)—Having known such sayings of old sages clever in distinguishing between what is righteous and what is not, all future princes, whether born in our family or others, should covet only the religious merit accruing from the preservation (of the religious gift). None should incur the disgrace and sin of confiscating it. He who, on the other hand, though thus entreated, will confiscate it or allow it to be confiscated, with his mind clouded by the darkness of ignorance as a result of greed, will incur the five great sins and minor sins, and will suffer, for a long time, (the pangs of) hells such as Raurava, Mahāraurava and Andhatāmisra).

And this has been declared by the holy Vyasa:—
(Here follow two benedictory and imprecatory verses.)

.. (Line 80)—And as it is, the donor of the charter records his approval by the hand of the scribe: “What is written here has been approved by Me, the Mahāmaṇḍalēśvara, the illustrious Aparādityadēva, the son of the Mahāmaṇḍalēśvara, the illustrious king Anantadēva. And this has been written with the king’s permission by me, the Mahāpradhāna, the illustrious Lakshmanaiya, who is the Senior Treasury Officer. Whatever is (written) here in deficient or redundant syllables, all that is authoritative.

May there be happiness and great prosperity !

No. 21 : PLATES LV and LVI
CINTRA STONE INSCRIPTION OF APARĀDITYA I : ŚAKA YEAR 1059

..THE original find-spot of this inscribed stone is not known[1], but from the contents of the record on it, it seems likely that it was in the vicinity of the Jōgēśvarī Cave to the north of Bombay in the Sālsette island. It is now preserved at Cintra near Lisbon in Portugal, in Penha Verde i.e. Green Rock, which, in the first half of the sixteenth century, had been the country seat (quinta in Portuguese) of the Indo-Portuguese Viceroy Don Joan de Castro. The inscription was first edited by Dr. E. Hultzsch with a transcript and a translation of the first fifteen lines, but without any facsimile in the Festgabe Hermann Jacobi, pp. 189 f. A photographic representation of the inscription was later published in Asia Major (1926), from which the plate accompanying this article has been prepared.

.. The inscribed stone bears at the top the symbols of the sun and the moon, and at the bottom the representation of the ass-curse as on several inscribed stones of the Śilāhāra period. The inscription consists of twenty-two lines written in the Nāgarī alphabet, but Hultzsch could give the reading of the first fifteen lines only. I have added that of the remaining lines with much diffidence as the letters have now become more or less illegible. As regards peculiarities of the alphabet, we may note that the initial i is still in its old form consisting of a curve below two dots, see ity-ādi, lines 9-10 ; the form of dh is somewhat peculiar, see samadhigata, line 2, and Mahāsāmantādhipati, line 3; the upper loop of th is not yet open on the left, see prathama, lines 8 and 9. The letter in its subscript form is laid on its side in –antasthita, line 11. The medial ē and ō are generally shown by a pṛishṭhamātrā. The language is Sanskrit.
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[1] Dom. J. H. de mouera tries to prove in his Indian Inscriptions at Cintra that this inscribed stone was originally at the Elephanta Caves, but Hultzsch has shown this to be unlikely. See Festgabe Hermann Jacobi, p. 189.