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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE FEUDATORIES OF THE MAIN BRANCH
No. 22 : PLATE XXII ... THIS inscription was discovered by Mr. R.D. Banerji in 1919. It was edited for the first time with a facsimile and a translation by Dr. V.S. Sukthankar in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XVII, pp. 12 ff. It is edited here from the same facsimile. ...The inscription is engraved on a detached slab of stone which Mr. Banerji found lying at the bottom of a ḍoṅgā, adjoining a hill called Maluhā-ṭongi near Ganj in the former Ajayagaḍh state, now included in Madhya Pradēsh. Close by is a ruined stone structure, probably a dam to hold the waters of the stream passing along the ḍoṅgā. The findspot of the present inscription it not far removed from the ruined city of Kuṭhārā where the Nachnē-kī-talāi inscriptions were discovered1. ...The present inscription is much better preserved than the preceding two records of the same king. The writing covers a space 2’ 1” by 1’. As in the Nachnē-kī-talāi inscriptions, there is in the centre of the first line the figure of a wheel. The characters are of the box−headed variety of the southern alphabets, resembling closely those of the preceding two records. As observed by Sukthankar, they are unequal in size and uncouth in appearance. The language is Sanskrit and the whole record is in prose. The orthography shows the same peculiarities as in the two preceding inscriptions.
The inscription is of Vyāghradēva, who mediated on the feet of the Vākāṭaka Mahārāja Pṛithivīshēṇa. He was evidently a feudatory of the latter. The object of the inscription is to record that Vyāghradēva did something, perhaps a dam to stem the waters of a stream, for the religious merit of his parents. As shown before, this Vyāghra was probably identical with the homonymous prince of the Uchchakalpa dynasty who flourished in circa 470-90 A.C.2 His suzerain was therefore probably the Vākāṭaka king Pṛithivīshēṇa II. TRANSLATION8
...Vyāghradēva, who meditates on the feet of the illustrious Pṛithivīshēṇa (II), the Mahārāja of the Vākāṭakas, has made (this) for the religious merit of (his) mother and father.
1 Ep. Ind., Vol. XVII, p. 12.
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