History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c15.s2.t10: Nalanda stone inscription of Yaśovarmmadeva

History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c15.s2.t10

Language: English

Nalanda stone inscription of Yaśovarmmadeva

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This interesting inscription in high-flown Sanskrit was discovered a few years ago at Nalanda.² It is a Buddhist document, and its object is to record that Mālada, the son of Yaśovarmmadeva’s minister, who is called Mārgapati, as well as Udīcipati and Pratīta-Tikiṇa, made certain gifts to the community of Bhikṣus and to the temple erected by king Bālāditya at Nalanda in honour of the “son of Suddhodana” i.e., the Buddha. It extols Yaśovarman in hyperbolic terms as the *lokapāla* (guardian of the world), who “has risen after placing his foot on the heads of all the kings and has completely removed the terrific darkness in the form of all his foes by the diffusion of the rays of his sword.”³ Now the problem arises: Who was this great monarch? Unfortunately, the epigraph is not dated, and it does not also mention his ancestry or any of his successors. This has, therefore, been the source of some controversy with regard to his identity.⁴ Dr. Hīrānanda Śāstrī thinks that he is identical with Yaśodharman of the Mandasor inscriptions, and further corrects the latter’s name into Yaśovarman.⁵ He relies mainly on the ground that the inscription “was written when Bālāditya was ruling, and when king Yaśovarmmadeva was holding the reins of sovereignty.”¹ Since this Bālāditya is, in Dr. Śāstrī’s opinion, the same as “the homonymous chief whom Yuan Chwang eulogises as the subduer of Mihirakula and the founder of the grand temple at Nalanda,” he finds it reasonable to identify Yaśovarmmadeva with Yaśodharmadeva, who was a contemporary of the Hūṇa chief, and hence also of Bālāditya. But, as pointed out by Dr. R. C. Majumdar, there is no warrant for the above assumption. The inscription merely alludes to a temple built by Bālāditya, and nowhere does it seem to imply that he was alive and ruling at the time it was set up. Besides, palæographical considerations indicate that the document probably belongs to a date much later than that of Yaśodharman. Dr. Śāstrī himself admits that the letters in which it is written present “a very marked development in contrast with those of the contemporary or even somewhat later inscriptions, and they largely resemble the characters of the Aphsad inscription of Ādityasena,”² whose known date from the Shahpur record is 66 = 672 A. D. He further notes that “the alphabet used in the inscription is, to a large extent, identical with the Devanāgarī or the Nāgarī.”³ And yet, strange to say, the similarity with the script of the Horiuzi (Japan) palm-leaf manuscript of the Uṣṇīṣavijayadhāraṇī of uncertain date has lead Dr. Śāstrī to assign the epigraph to a ruler flourishing in 533-34 A. D. according to the Mandasor inscription. Lastly, the suggested correction of the name Yaśodharman into Yaśovarman has hardly any justification, and there can be absolutely no doubt from the facsimile that the latter name is the correct reading. We may add here that even Fleet, who considered the form of the name while editing the Mandasor inscription refrained from adopting any change in the termination.¹ It would thus appear from the above discussion that the present inscription most probably belongs to the reign of Yaśovarman of Kanauj, who, as we know from the Gauḍavaho, had brought Magadha under his subjection.

Linked texts (2)

Gauḍavaho — Vākpatirāja, Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit
Uṣṇīṣavijayādhāraṇī — Sanskrit

History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c15.s2.t10: Nalanda stone inscription of Yaśovarmmadeva

Nalanda stone inscription of Yaśovarmmadeva

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Linked texts (2)