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

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS; No. 67, XL A. 269
(L. 4.)—Whosoever may interrupt this (grant), he shall become invested with (the
guilt of) the five great sins!

No. 67; PLATE XL A.

TUSAM ROCK INSCRIPTION.

THIS inscription appears to have been discovered by Mr. Bird, and was first brought to
notice by General Cunningham in 1875, in the Archæol. Surv. Ind. Vol. V. p. 138 ff., where
he published a translation of it by Babu Pratap Chandra Ghosh, accompanied by a litho-
graph (id. Plate xl. No. 5).
Tusâm¹ or Tusâm is a village about fourteen miles to the north-west of Bhiwânî,²
the chief town of the Bhiwânî Tahsîl or Sub-Division of the Hisâr or Hissâr District in
the Pañjâb. Immediately on the west of the village there is a steep isolated hill, that
rises abruptly out of the plain to a height of some eight hundred feet. And the present
inscription is on the surface of a rock, about half-way up the east side of this hill.
About a foot below the centre of the last line of the inscription, there is engraved on
the rock an emblem, of which a complete restoration is given by General Cunningham in
his published lithograph, and which may be either a Buddhist dharmachakra or ‘wheel of
religion,’ or a sun-symbol. But there is nothing to connect it of necessity with the in-
scription now published; and it may belong to one of the shorter records, e.g. the Jitaṁ
bhagavatâ bhagavat-pâda-dêśê, “victory has been achieved by the Divine One, in (this)
region belonging to the feet³ of the Divine One,” which is engraved just above the present
inscription, in large and somewhat irregular characters of about the same period.⁴—The
writing covers an extreme space of about 4' 2" broad by 2' 2½" high; the lines being of
unequal length to suit the irregularities of the rock. The engraving was rather shallow,
and some of the letters are a good deal weather-worn; but, on the original rock, the in-
scription is quite legible throughout.—The size of the letters varies from ¾" to 1½". The
characters belong to the northern class of alphabets; but in the word aḷi, ‘a bee,’ in
line 1, they include the southern ḷ, which I have commented on at page 4 above.—The
language is Sanskrit; and the inscription is in prose throughout.—In respect of ortho-
graphy, the only points that call for notice are (1) the doubling of dh, in conjunction
with a following y, in upâddhyâya, line 5; and (2), as noted above, the use of the southern
ḷ in aḷi, line 1, which is probably due to Sômatrâta, whose record this inscription is, being
a Sâtvata from Central or Southern India.⁵

¹ The ‘Toosham and Tosham’ of maps. Indian Atlas, Sheet No. 49. Lat. 28° 51' N.; Long.
76° 0' E.—The name is written sometimes with the palatal sibilant, and sometimes with the dental;
but with a preference for the former.—Gen. Cunningham wrote the name ‘Tushâm,’ and suggested
that it is derived from Tushâr-ârâma, ‘the Tushâra monastery.’ But the sibilant is not the lingual
sh; and the proposed etymology, due in the first instance to the supposition that the inscription men-
tioned a Tushâra king named Vishṇu, cannot be upheld.
² The ‘Bhewani and Bhewannee’ of maps
³ See page 123 above, note 5.
⁴ See Archæol. Surv. Ind. Vol V. Pl. xl. No. 1; which, however, is not quite an accurate repre-
sentation of the original.
⁵ See page 271 below, note 1.