Page:The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 4-1875.djvu/128

 April, 1875.] OLD CANAEESE INSCMPTTOXS. 115 A few days ago, after representing to the Brahmans that wo were the Raja for the time being, the Deputy Commissioner and I succeeded in seeing the celebrated goddess. She was kept in a small thatched house fenced in on every side, and no one but ourselves and the , Brahman was allowed to come near. The images were brought out, and we found there was a brass image of Ran C h a n d i and another of Shama, and two swords which were supposed to be incarnations (if such a phrase may be used) of the goddesses. The swords looked very ancient; one of them was pointed, and the other cut off straight at the point : they appeared to me to have been intended for sacrifices. They were entirely of iron, with no ornaments about them, but evi- dently kept with great care, and painted with red and white. The story of Ran Chandt, as told me by the Kachans, is as follows : — T h e re was on ce a K A ch&rl 1 1 •', j a named N i r - b h a r N a r a y a n, who was renowned as a just and wise prince, but he only worshipped Vishnu and never offered sacrifices, till one night Ran Chandl appeared to him in a dream and said, '* To-morrow morning early you most go to the bank of the river Mad urn (the place is now called Chan dig-hut.) and there yon will see a living crea- ture :seizeit fearlessly by the head and take itaway in whatever form it may assume, and worship it and offer sacrifices to it : by doing this you will become great, and your children will reign after you." Next morning the king, as the goddess had commanded, went to the river-side and there ho saw a terrible snake playing in the
 * he was alarmed at the sight, and instead

of seizing it by the head he caught it by the tail, and the goddess took the form of a sword and was worshipped under the name of R ;"t n C h a n d i . But the king, thinking that the taking of life was the greatest sin he could commit, offered no sacrifices to the goddess, and she beeame angry with him and struck all his musical instruments, guns and cannons dumb, so that their sound could not be heard, and again ap- peared to him in a dream and said, "You will enjoy your kingdom no longer ; so to-morrow cause instruments to be played and guns to be fired in every house, and in whosoever 's house you hear the sound of instruments and guns, mount him on the throne and yourself cease from reigning." So the king did as he was Ordered, and as he only found one man in whose house lie could hear the soand of instruments and guns, he made him ascend the throne, and liimself retired from the kingdom. This man, whose name was U d a y B h i m X "i r a y a n , d the goddess so mach by offering her a lakh of sacrifices and continually worshipping her, that his posterity, down to the time of Raja Govinda Chandra, have always sat on the throne of Katchar. The goddess Shama, who is supposed to be embodied in the other sword, is said to have been captured from a king of the D e h an s, the hereditary bondsmen of the Ks'icharis, by Raja Bonlla, a king who reigned at Maibong, a place in the North KucMri hills near Asalu, where ruins still exist, from Khaspur, the former capital of the D bans. njSGBtFFIOITS AT BATL-HOXCAU IN THE S AMPGATJM TALUKA OP THE l.GAUM DISTRICT. BY J. V. FLEET, Bu.C.S. The temple at Bail-Hongal, standing to the north of the town outside the walls, is now a I.ii*i_it shrine, but appears to have been originally a Jain building. It has two inscriptions con- nected with it : — No. 1. The first inscription is contnined on a stone tablet standing on the right front of the temple, i. 0. on the left hand of any om; being the temple. The emblems at the top of the stone are : — In the centre, a linga and priest ; on their right, the sun; and on their left, a cow and calf with the moon beyond them. The inscription is in the Old Canarese characters and language. There are traces of about 7'S lines averaging 46 letters each. The stone 9 to be a schistose limestone, and the -sur- face of it is full of small fissures and is very much worn away. With great labour the con- tents of the first twenty lines or so might be made out, bnt no connected transcript ion could possibly be made of the remainder; only a few letters are legible here and there. It is a Ratta inscription, that family being mentioned in it by the older form of the name,— Rashtrakuta. In