North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SILAHARAS OF NORTH KONKAN

vishaya of Kaṭashaḍī has been donated to Lashaṇa Upādhyāya. This religious gift has been given for the penance and happiness (of the donor).

.. That person who would preserve this gift . . . . . . would obtain wealth. None should object (to this gift). The mother of him, however, who would cause obstruction . . . . . . .by an ass.

No. 30 : PLATE XVIIII
LŌNĀḌ STONE INSCRIPTION OF APARĀDITYA II : ŚAKA YEAR 1106

.. THE stone bearing this inscription was found in February 1882, about a mile South-west of Lōṇāḍ in the Bhiwaṇḍī tālukā of the Ṭhāṇā District. The stone was first removed to the Ṭhāṇā Collector’s office, then to the building of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and finally to that of the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, where it has since then been preserved.

.. The inscription has been mentioned by Pandit Bhagvanlal Indraji in the Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. I, part ii, p. 20, note 2, and also in the same Gazetteer, Vol. XIV, p. 212. It was first edited, without a facsimile, by Dr. M.G. Dikshit in the Journal of the Bihar Research Society, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 210, and later, with a facsimile, by Dr. S.G. Tulpule in his Prāchīna Marāṭhī Kōrīva Lēkha, pp. 72 f. It is edited here from the same facsimile.

..“The inscribed stone measures about 1’ 6” (45.72 cm.) broad and 2’ 4” (71.12 cm.) high and about 7” (17.78 cm.) in thickness. At the top of it are the usual figures of the sun and the moon, and a kalaśa in the centre. Below these, in the upper half of the inscribed portion, in a rectangular space measuring 4” (10.16 cm.) by 7” (17.78 cm.) appears the representation of a Śiva-liṅga, in half-relief. This rectangle divides the first five lines of the inscription into two halves. Below the inscription appears the Ass-curse often noticed in the inscriptions of the mediaeval period. [1]”

.. The inscription consists of twenty lines of writing. Several letters especially in lines 8 to 12 have become illegible owing to the exposure of the stone to the sun and rain. Still, much of the important matter can still be read with more or less certainty.

.. The characters are of the Nāgarī alphabet. The only noteworthy forms of letters are as follows: The initial i still retains its old form (see ity-ētasmin, line6); see also kh in likhitā, line 15, and th in Pōruthi, line 10. Except for a half verse in lines 16-17, the whole record is in prose. The language is incorrect Sanskrit mixed with Marathi. The only orthographical peculiarities that call for notice are the change of tsa to chha in saṁvachharē, line 3, and that of the palatal ś to the dental s as in Vyōmēsvara, line 19.

.. The inscription refers itself to the reign of the Śilāhāra king Aparādityadēva (II), who, like other Śilāhāras, is described as ‘adorned with all royal titles’ thought none of these is specifically mentioned here. It is dated in the Śaka year 1106, expressed both in words and figures, on Monday, the fifteenth tithi of the dark fortnight of Kārttika, on which there was a solar eclipse, the cyclic year being Krōdhin. This date regularly corresponds, for the amānta month Kārttika, to the 5th November A.D. 1184, when the week day was Monday, there was a solar eclipse, and the cyclic year was Krōdhin according to the southern system, as stated in the present inscription.

.. The object of the inscription is to record the gift, probably, of a field, situated in Vēharali village (hamlet) included in the Dahasagrāma in the Shaṭshashṭi vishaya, made by Bhōpaka Vyōmaśaṁbhu with the king’s permission on the holy occasion of a solar eclipse in favour of Vyōmēśvaradēva, who seems to have been God Śiva in the form of a liṅga named after
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[1] J.B.R.S., Vol. XXIX, p. 210.