Substrate Siddham ID: OB00017
Material stone Object type slab
Dimensions width 35 cm height 18 cm depth 22–27 cm
Discovery before 1938, in the vicinity of Bihar Kotra (23°38’07”N 77°06’33”E) Current location Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai (in storage)
Inscription Siddham ID: IN00018
Dimensions width 33 cm height 17 cm Char size 15 mm Line height 20–30 mm
Date CE 417–418 Basis of dating dated (Kṛta) 474 expired, Śrāvaṇa śukla 2 (l2–3) Topic construction of a well for the Buddhist saṅgha
Persons mentioned Naravarman; Bhaṭṭī-mahara, Vīrasena Places mentioned —
Compendia CII3rev 15; SI III.51A; GKA 343; IBI 95.Bihār Kotra.1 Other editions Chakravarti 1942
A2 Bihar Kotra Stone Inscription of the Time of Naravarman 47
margins are slightly irregular, but the individual characters are neatly, boldly and deeply engraved. The height of their bodies is about 1.5 centimetres, and the lines are spaced 2–3 centimetres apart.
bottom edge. The fracture of the left-hand edge has resulted in the loss of one character each from the first three lines.
The inscription consists of six lines, the last of which extends to less than half the width of the stone. Lines and
Figure 9: Bihar Kotra Stone Inscription of the Time of Naravarman. Inked rubbing from Bhandarkar (CII3rev Plate 15).
Figure 10: Bihar Kotra Stone Inscription of the Time of Naravarman. Composite digital photo by the author, 2018. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. Not to be reproduced without prior permission of the Trustees.
Script and Language
The inscription is an early specimen of the angular form of the Mālava script. The characters have nail heads of varying size. Ra has a long, hooked stem in the south-ern style; the single specimen of ka without a subscript conjunct lacks a hook on its long stem, and other letters follow essentially northern forms.24 Notably, ṇa is open-mouthed and ma is open and has a tail; its angularity is further emphasised by a sharp bend in its left arm, which almost gives it the appearance of a conjunct character.
Bha is of the angular type, with the legs meeting at an angle at the head. Da is also angular or, in Dani’s termi-nology, double-curved. Śa is also notably angular with a flat top and an outward curve in the left leg; the right leg is slightly elongated. Ca is a broad oblong with a pro-nounced beak. The sign of medial e is always a śiromātrā, but medial ā is sometimes shown as a horizontal stroke bending downward. The choice of sign may be driven by the consonant, though with such a small sample, the correlation may well be random. All instances of tā (represented in the conjunct tvā), nā, rā and hā take the horizontal stroke; khā and, surprisingly, śā (represented only as śrā and ścā, l3 and l5) have a downward-slanting vowel mark attached to the body on the right; nā, pā and yā have their vowel signs on the top. The sign for medial i is a circle or spiral open at the bottom on the left side; ī is its mirror image, open on the right. Halanta m (a sim-plified form of ma without the break in the left arm, in a subscript position) is used twice; in both instances an anusvāra would be expected, and the halanta consonant must have been employed as a substitute for a punctu-ation mark. Elsewhere, anusvāra is used in a standard manner, with one redundant anusvāra before a halanta m in line 1. Visarga use is slightly irregular, with a redundant visarga in line 1 and an omitted one at the end of line 2.
Upadhmānīya and jihvāmūlīya do not occur. Consonants (except for ṣ) are doubled after r; t is also doubled before r (puttreṇa, l4), while satvānāṃ (l5) is spelt with a single t.
The language is by and large standard Sanskrit. The word catusaptateṣu (l2–3) may reflect a non-standard form rather than a simple omission of a visarga. Śrīr is used instead of śrī in compound (l1), as in other inscriptions of the time of Naravarman (A1, A3).
24 Sircar (1965b, 399), however, describes the script as “late Brāhmī of the southern class,” which shows how imprecise such a southern/
northern classification scheme is.
Commentary
The epigraph records the donation of a well (udapāna) to the Buddhist community. The donor, whose rank or occu-pation are not revealed, was Vīrasena, son of Bhaṭṭi-ma-hara. Bhandarkar restores tta (for mahattara) at the end of line 3. There is definitely no lost text here, and the bit chipped off at the beginning of the next one is probably (though not beyond doubt) too narrow to have accom-modated a lost character. I therefore retain Chakravarti’s reading mahara (though tta may have been omitted). The inscription was made in the year 474 during the reign of Naravarman the Olikara. The spelling may be the engrav-er’s mistake for Aulikara,25 but it is also possible that Olikara was an epithet or name of Naravarman (see the discussion on page 24), so I do not emend the reading. The era is not specified, but is evidently the Kṛta (Vikrama) Era.
The day is the second in the bright fortnight of Śrāvaṇa, i.e. only seven months before or five months after the cave inscription at the same site (A3), depending on whether the calendar year began in Kārttika or Caitra. The equiv-alent date in the Common Era would be early summer in 417 or 418. Although the years are not explicitly said to be expired, this is implied by the use of the locative plural;
however, the use of the ordinal saptateṣu and the singu-lar form saṃvatsare may on the contrary indicate that the year is the current one. If this is the case, the equivalent date is 416 or 417 CE. Bhandarkar restores a supposedly lost character viṃ at the end of the first line, claiming it is “fairly clear in one estampage” (CII3rev p. 267 n. 5). He theorises that the character lost at the beginning of the second line would have been śe, meaning that the date is simultaneously the twentieth (viṃśe) year of Naravar-man’s reign. His editor (Gai or Chhabra) suggests vijaya would be a more plausible restoration. There is, however, no trace of vi (or any other character) at the end of line 1.
The akṣara of which only the top right corner remains at the beginning of line 2 was in all probability sva on the basis of the newly edited cave inscription (A3). This means that there is no basis for assuming that Naravarman’s reign commenced in 397–398 CE.
25 S. N. Chakravarti in fact reads aulikara, arguing that the symbol (a mirrored S shape, see Figure 1 on page 12 for an illustration) in fact stands for initial au. N. P. Chakravarti, the editor of his article in Epigraphia Indica, disagrees (Chakravarti 1942, 131 n. 9), and D. R. Bhandarkar also interprets the symbol as o. I concur; this exact form is attested in Ikṣvāku inscriptions for o, while au should have an additional stroke.
A2 Bihar Kotra Stone Inscription of the Time of Naravarman 49
Curated Text
[1][si]ddha{ṃ}m⟨|⟩
śrī¡r!-mmahārāja-naravarmmaṇaḥ ¡o!likarasya[2] [sva]-rājya-saṃvatsare caturṣu varṣa-śateṣu catu⟨ḥ⟩[3][sa]
ptateṣu śrāvaṇa-śukla-dvitīyāyām⟨|⟩ bhaṭṭi-maha[4]
ra-satputtreṇa vīrasenenāyam udapānaḥ khāni[5]
taś cāturddiśaṃ bhikṣu-saṃgham uddiśya sarvva-sa¡tv!ānāṃ [6]tṛṣṇā-kṣayāyāstu⟨|⟩
Diplomatic Text
[1] [si]ddha¡ṃ!M śrī¡r!-mmahārāja-naravarmmaṇaḥ ¡o!likarasya
[2] [sva]-rājya-saṃvatsare caturṣu varṣa-śateṣu catu
[3] [sa]ptateṣu śrāvaṇa-śukla-dvitīyāyāM bhaṭṭi-maha
[4] ra-satputtreṇa vīrasenenāyam udapānaḥ khāni
[5] taś cāturddiśaṃ bhikṣu-saṃgham uddiśya sarvva-sa¡tv!ānāṃ
[6] tṛṣṇā-kṣayāyāstu
Translation Accomplished.26
In the year of His Majesty King Naravarman the Olikara’s own reign,
when four hundred years and seventy-four [had elapsed],
on the bright second lunar day of Śrāvaṇa, Vīrasena, the true son of Bhaṭṭi-mahara, has had this well excavated for the sake of the universal noble congregation (saṅgha).
May it exist for the elimination of thirst (tṛṣṇā27) for all beings.
Footnotes
26 See page 6 about translating siddham as “accomplished.”
27 Note the double entendre in tṛṣṇā, meaning literal thirst which the well helps quench, and metaphysical thirst as the prime cause of suf-fering in Buddhist thought. This was also pointed out by Bhandarkar (CII3rev p. 267 n. 11).
Text Notes
Alternative opinions cited below are from Bhandarkar’s edition in CII3rev (Bh) and from that of Chakravarti (Ch).
[1] siddham⟧ Bh reads siddhaye at the beginning and says it “seems to have been engraved later and slantingly between lines 1 and 2 about the beginning” (CII3rev p. 267 n.1). According to his editor (i.e. Gai or Chhabra, ibid.), this is incorrect; he says, “The reading is siddham, where the final m is written in a diminutive form below the line.” Ch also reads siddham and notes that it stands in front of and between lines 1 and 2. The correct reading is in fact ddhaṃM (si being wholly lost), with a superfluous anusvāra before the halanta m, which Bhandarkar saw as ye. The halanta character is lowered as usual, but this does not mean that this word is engraved at a slant or between the first two lines; ddha is aligned perfectly with line 1, and the lost si would have been level with this. The redundant anusvāra is a dot like the one in saṃgha (l5), but unlike that in cāturddiśaṃ (also l5), which is a circle.
[1] olikarasya⟧ Ch reads aulikarasya; see the Commentary.
[2] sva ⟧ Bh restores viṃśe; see the Commentary.
[3] saptateṣu⟧ Bh reads saptatiṣu. Ch has the correct reading, which is definitely te, as in the cave inscription (A3).
[3] mahara⟧ Bh restores mahattara. See the Commentary above.
[5] satvānāṃ⟧ Bh prints satvānaṃ, emending to sattvānāṃ. Tsuka-moto (IBI p. 609) reads sātvānāṃ, emending likewise. Ch gives the correct reading, which is clear.
[6] kṣayāyāstu⟧ The first yā is vertically compressed and raised.
Below it, a large chip has split off the edge of the stone. This defect must have been present before the inscription was created; the bottom right corner of kṣa was actually engraved over the edge of the defect.
The second yā is also slightly raised and compressed, but the defect does not extend this far; this character was engraved in this position to let the line curve back gently to the regular level.
[6] There is a pair of curved horizontal lines after the last character.
Ch notes these may be either a punctuation mark or just a pair of scratches. I am certain that they are the latter: it is evident in the stone that they have hardly any depth.
Description
This inscription is located in a rock shelter, one of several in the face of a north-facing cliff above a small lake about 1.5 kilometres west of the village of Bihar Kotra (िबहार कोटरा), Rajgarh district, Madhya Pradesh. The cave can be accessed by climbing to the Kotra Mataji temple and follow-ing a ledge to the right along the cliff. Shaped like a rough quarter sphere, the shelter has probably been enlarged artificially, but the surfaces are not even and there are no carved architectural elements nor any decorative carving.
The inscription is about 150 centimetres above the floor on the right-hand side of the back wall. The inscribed area, 58 centimetres at its widest and 25 centimetres high, is not marked off from the wall surface in any way.
It was first studied by Jitendra Datt Tripathi and reported, with a synopsis of the contents, in IAR 1982–83, 121, 135,28 and by K. V. Ramesh (1985, 7). Tripathi (1997, 64) subsequently published an eye copy and a Devanagari tran-script (both inaccurate) in a Hindi article. V. S. Wakankar’s reading of the inscription, much better but still inaccurate, has been published posthumously (Wakankar 2002, 27 and photograph on p. 44).29 The text was edited in 2018 in
28 The photograph labelled “Vigharkotra” inscription (plate 8) on page 163 of this publication shows the Narsinghgarh inscription of Aparājitavardhana (C1). The date is given on page 121 as VS 4784, which is mistyped. These errors have already been pointed out by Richard Salomon (1989, 33 n. 14).
29 This compilation of Wakankar’s inscription readings evidently lacked a competent curator. Many of the mistakes in the texts are clearly the result of misread Devanagari, presumably introduced in the process of transferring Wakankar’s handwritten transcripts to print. If the manuscripts are still available, a re-publication would
a digital medium (the Siddham database) by the present author, and the first rigorous printed edition is the one pub-lished here. I visited the site in January 2017 and took photo-graphs of the inscription. I hereby express my thanks to the sarpanch Jwala Prasad Bundela for allowing this, and my heartfelt gratitude to Raghubir Kushvah and Raju Kevat for guiding me to this cave and others and boosting me up a cliff wall which seemed insurmountable to me but which they, shod in flip-flop chappals, negotiated with the nonchalant grace of mountain goats. I can only hope the monks who once resided here had ladders.
Both the left and the right margins are uneven and the length of lines varies between 42 and 58 centimetres.
The inscription consists of five fairly straight horizontal lines, with characters 1.5 to 2 centimetres tall spaced 4–5 centimetres one below the other. The engraving is weath-ered but generally well preserved. The lettering has been enhanced in recent times with a white substance, proba-bly by Tripathi.30 This is generally helpful and accurate, but in some places the chalked lines obscure the original.
On the whole, the inscription is in very good condition.
Script and Language
This epigraph is in the rounded form of the Mālavan alpha-bet. Ra, ka and initial a have an elongated stem with a hook at the bottom. La has an extended, curving tail, which is truncated when i or ī is attached, while e attaches to the
be desirable provided that an editor who actually knows something about Sanskrit and epigraphy could be found.
30 The white substance may be toothpaste; see note 430 on page 241.