Page:Epigraphia Indica, Volume 2.djvu/35

TEWAR INSCRIPTION OF JAYASIMHADEVA. 17 (V. 33.) Who, shedding a pleasing lustre, filled to overflowing with kindness, long enjoying a gratifying position, acted the part of a lamp 81 to the three worlds.

(34.) His son Prithvidhara, who has seen the further shores of all the deep oceans of learning, (a?id) by whose crowds of disciples the circle of the regions has been conquered, wrote this eulogy.

(35.) Of him the younger brother, the sage named Salidhara, well versed in logic and wondrously clever, composed this eulogy.

(36.) The architect named Pithe, who knows the rules of Visvakarrnan, 82 planned all this, as Prithu did the earth.

(37.) Mahidhara, a son of the chief of artizans Balasimha, so wrought this stone with letters that it is like the star-covered sky.

The year 907, on Sunday the 11th of the bright half of Margasirsha.

The stone which bears this short inscription was procured by Dr. P. E. Hall at Tewar, a village about six miles to the west of Jabalpur, in the Central Provinces, and presented by him to the American Oriental Society in whose Cabinet, at New Haven, it is now deposited. 1 It is said to be of like character with that of Alhanadevi's inscription. 2 Dr. Hall also first edited the inscription, with a translation, in the Journal Am. Or. Soc, vol. VI, pp. 512-13 ; and his text was subsequently reprinted in Roman characters, with a photozincograph of the inscription, in Dr. Burgess' Memoranda, Archceol. Survey of Western India, No. 10, p. 110, and his translation in Sir A. Cunningham's Archceol. Survey of India, vol. IX, pp. 95-96. I now re-edit 3 the inscription from an impression and a rubbing, kindly prepared for me by Mr. Herbert C. Tohwan, of Yale University, New Haven.

The inscription contains 9 lines of writing, the last of which is engraved along the proper left margin, and which together cover a space of 11" broad by 7" high. The writing is on the whole well preserved, but it is somewhat roughly and irregularly cut, and there are several aJcsharas in line 5 and one at the end of line 8, the true reading of which cannot be made out with absolute certainty. The size of the letters is between 4 and |". The characters are Nagari, and the language is Sanskrit. Excepting the symbol for om at the commencement of line 1, lines 1-6 are in verse ; the rest of the inscription is in prose. As regards orthography, b is denoted by the sign for v in vrahma Brahmddi-{hQ only words in which b would occur), in line 1 ; and the dental sibilant is

81 The adjectives of this verse would of course be also applicable to a lamp ; sneha also means ' oil ', and daSd ' the wick of a lamp '.

82 The architect of the gods. The adjective would also mean ' who knows how to execute every kind of work'.

1 See Journal Am. Or. Soc, vol. VI, pp. 499 and 536; and C. Grant's Gazetteer of the Central Provinces, 2nd ed., p. 487.

2 Ante, No. II.

3 I merely have had to verily Dr. Hall's text, which, so far as one may speak with confidence, is substantially correct.