गुप्त अभिलेख संग्रह (जे. एफ. फ्लीट - गुप्त सम्राटों एवं परवर्ती नरेशों के ऐतिहासिक पाषाण व ताम्रलेख)

142 CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM INDICARUM, VOL. III.
(L. 5.)—By him, the king,—who attained sole supreme sovereignty¹ in the world, ac-
quired by his own arm and (enjoyed) for a very long time; (and) who, having the name
of Chandra, carried a beauty of countenance like (the beauty of) the full-moon,—having
in faith² fixed his mind upon (the god) Vishṇu, this lofty standard of the divine Vishṇu
was set up on the hill (called) Vishṇupada.
No. 33; PLATE XXI B.
MANDASOR STONE PILLAR INSCRIPTION OF YASODHARMAN.
THIS inscription, which I published, for the first time, in 1886, in the Ind. Ant.
Vol. XV. p. 253 ff., is another record from Mandasôr,³ or more properly Dasôr, the
chief town of the Mandasôr District of Scindia's Dominions in the Western Mâlwa
division of Central India. With the inscription of Kumâragupta and Bandhuvarman,
No. 18 above, page 79, and Plate xi., it was discovered in 1884, in the search made
under my direction, in consequence of my having seen the hand-copy of the next in-
scription, No. 34, that had been sent by Mr. Arthur Sulivan to General Cunningham in
1879; the present inscription had escaped Mr. Sulivan's notice. Like the next inscrip-
tion, it is on one of a pair of magnificent monolith columns,⁴ apparently of very close-
grained and good sandstone, lying in a field immediately on the south side of a small
collection of huts, known by the name of Sôdaṇî or Sôndaṇî, but not shewn in the maps
as a separate village, between two and three miles to the south-east of Mandasôr.

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¹ aikâdhirâjya; lit. 'the condition of being the sole Adhirâja.'—Adhirâja, lit. 'supreme king,'
is a technical feudatory title, probably denoting the same rank as Mahârâja. It occurs, for instance,
in line 5 of the Byânâ inscription of the Adhirâja Vijaya (Ind. Ant. Vol. XIV. p. 10). Its derivative,
dhirâjya, however, is here used in a general and non-technical sense, in accordance with its original
etymological meaning.
² In line 6, dhâvêna, as read by Prinsep, is what is really engraved; not bhâvêna, as read by
Bhau Daji. But, as dhâva, 'cleansing, washing, making bright, polishing,' appears to be used only
in composition, the word seems to be a mistake for bhâvêna, which is equivalent to the bhaktyâ of,
for instance, line 5 of No. 6 above, page 35; and this is borne out by the position of the word in the
text.—The engraving of the rest of the inscription, however, is so very correct, that it is just pos-
sible that future researches may even yet shew that Dhâva is a proper name here, as it was interpret-
ed by Prinsep. In that case, Dhâva, as another name of a king called Chandra, might be compared
with Kâcha, which I have intimated (page 27 above, note 4) may be a familiar and less formal name
of Samudragupta.—In line 5 I have arranged my translation according to the order of the words in
the text. But, assuming that the composer's arrangement of them was due to metrical exigencies, we
might translate—"(and) who, carrying a beauty of countenance like (the beauty of) the full-moon,
had (in consequence) the name of Chandra;" and thus obtain a hint that the king's original name was
not Chandra.
³ See page 79 above, and note 1
⁴ About fifty yards away to the west of these two inscribed columns, in the next field, I turned
up the lower part of another large sandstone column. The base is rectangular, about 3' 6" high by
3' 4" square. The shaft, of which only a length of about 2' 0" remains attached to the base, is cir-
cular about 3' 4" in diameter; and, instead of being plain like the two inscribed columns, it is carved
all over with cross-lines into diamond-shaped knobs. I had the field excavated all round this column,
but could find no traces of the rest of the shaft, or of the other parts of it. From its different pat-
tern, it can have no connection with the two inscribed columns.