Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c8.s2.11

c8.s2.11

At the upper end of the valley, on the east side of the stream, is the old, but very insignificant, temple of Āi Bhavānī. Very little of the original building remains intact, most of what is seen being rebuilt from the material of an older temple. From what little does remain the temple would appear to have been a cluster of small shrines, with one or two small halls. At present the place is in a very ruinous and dirty condition. Built into the outside of the enclosing wall is a much abraided inscription slab, but as this wall has been built partly of old temple materials, this may not be in its original position. The greater part of it is in Sanskrit, the remainder in a kind of old Marāṭhī. Its main object is to record that the chief astrologer of the Yādava king Simhaṇa, Changdeva by name, grandson of the well-known astronomer Bhāskarāchārya, founded a college for the study of the Siddhāntaśiromaṇi and other works of his grandfather and relations. The college was endowed with land and other sources of income by the brothers Sōidēva and Hēmādidēva, two members of the Nikumbha family, who, as feudatories of the Yādavas, ruled over the country of the 1,600 villages. The metrical part of the inscription is followed by a prose passage which records a grant made by Sōidēva in favour of Chāngdēva's college in Śaka 1128 (A.D. 1206). This grant must, of course, have been made some time before the inscription itself was composed; for we know, from the preceding, that the inscription was put up during the reign of Simhaṇa who began to rule in Śaka 1131. and at a time when the feudatory Sōidēva was dead and had been succeeded by his younger brother. The inscription itself is not dated, but it may have been composed in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, some time after A.D. 1209-10.²