No. 1. Bhadrak inscription of Gana; regnal year 8.
| D. Ch. Sircar - EI, XXIX, No. 23. |
| (DS) Sometime about the middle of the year 1951, reports reached me that Mr.
S. C. De, Curator of Archives, attached to the Orissa State Museum, Bhubaneswar, had found
an inscribed stone in the vicinity of the well-known town of Bhadrak in the Balasore
District of Orissa. I also learnt that the stone, believed to have been originally the
lintel of the door of a temple, had been secured for the Orissa State Museum and brought
to Bhubaneswar. I wrote to the authorities of the Museum requesting them to send me a few
impressions of the inscription for examination; unfortunately no impression reached me as
a result of the correspondence. The characters resemble those of the so-called eastern
variety of the Gupta alphabet. The language of the inscription is Prakrit. We know that
originally the epigraphic language of the whole of India was Prakrit, that Sanskrit is
first found in North Indian epigraphs about the beginning of the Christian era and that it
gradually ousted Prakrit from the field of Indian epigraphy. The suppression of Sanskrit
by Prakrit in the epigraphic records of the lower part of South India took place as late
as the middle of the fourth century A.D. Mahàràja Gaía, during whose reign the inscription was engraved about the second half of the third century A.D., is not known from any other source. He seems to have been a ruler of the ancient Utkala country bounded by the rivers Vaitaraíè [Cf. Mahàbhàrata, III, 114, 3; above, Vol. XXVIII, p. 179.] and Kansai (ancient Kapiùà) [Cf. Raghuvaìùa, IV, 38; above, loc. cit. Utkala came later to be known as the Îära country no doubt after the name of an allied tribe of that name. The Îäras may have originally inhabited parts of Northern Orissa.] and lying between the lands inhabited by the Vaêgas and the Kaliêgas. [Raghuvaìùa, loc. cit.] He was probably an independent monarch like the kings of Puøkaraíà (modern Pokharna on the Damodar in South-West Bengal), who are known from the Susunia inscription. As already indicated above, king Chandravarman of Puøkaraíà was overthrown by the Gupta emperor Samudragupta about the middle of the fourth century A.D. Whether the Utkala country was also conquered by Samudragupta about the same time is as yet unknown. The Sumaíäala plates [Above, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 79 ff.] of the Gupta year 250 (569 A.D.), however, show that imperial Gupta suzerainty was acknowledged in Kaliêga and presumably also in Utkala. Although it is difficult in the present state of our knowledge to ascribe the conquest of Kaliêga and Utkala to a particular Gupta monarch, it is possible to suggest that the event took place before the death of Kumàragupta I, grandson of Samudragupta, in 455 A.D., as the successors of that monarch do not appear to have been powerful enough to effect the annexation of such far off territories. These conquests should better be attributed to Samudragupta or to his son Chandragupta II Vikramàditya described as kðtsna-pðthvè-jay-àrtha in one of the Udayagiri inscriptions (cf. also the reference to his dig-vijaya in the Meharauli inscription). [Cf. Selected Inscriptions, pp. 272, 275 ff.] As however Utkala is not mentioned in the Allahabad pillar inscription in connection with the victorious campaigns of Samudragupta, the second alternative seems preferable. [In this connection, it may be noted that the Meharauli inscription attributes to Chandragupta II the conquest of a country on the Southern Sea.] Whether the rulers of Àryàvarta, mentioned in that record as overthrown by the Gupta monarch, included a ruler of Utkala cannot be determined. We have said that the eighty measures of land granted by Mólajapa were apportioned in a locality called Pànida. The place may not have been far away from Bhadrak, near which the inscription has been found. I have not succeeded in identifying the locality.(DS) |
TEXT
1 [Siddham] [|*] Mah[à]r[à]ja-sir[i]-Gaíasa sa[ì 8|] [M]ólajap[åna] d[å]và 3
dat[à]
2 [àäha?]vapa 80 [|*] Mah[à]kulapati-ayya-Agisamånaì(na) Pàni[då] vaäidaì
paäichhidaì [|*]
3 . . . . . . . . . . . i.i. [adhivàsa(si)ka Bhada?] Apavasa [Mahàsa]ra Ghali Aäasama
11 [|] 12
____________________
From the impressions kindly supplied by Dr. Chhabra.
L. 1. Siddham expressed by a symbol which is faintly visible.
L. 2. The reading may possibly also be àyya-Àgisamåna; but I am inclined to ignore the
traces about the tail of à in both the cases. (For Pàni[då]) What I have read as då
may possibly also be 3 or ja, although that would hardly give any sense.
L. 3. The first letter in this name (Aäasama) may possibly be also read as à; full-stop
in this case seems to be indicated by a slanting line.