Analysed text: sarasvatT/ trivikramapadodbhutd vandanTyd sarvajiasyd(pi>) irasd rasalam.krtisobhand// kdmadevasutah
The text is a mixture of verse (sloka) and prose (i.e. ofgadya and padya). The verses appear to contain several double-entendres (slesa), whereas the last hemistich is to be read twice (indicated by the figure 2 between dandas) in a different way in order to make a complete sloka verse. This is made explicit by the prose statement that it should be understood as a samudgayamaka,i.e. that the same aksaras can be grouped into two ways yielding different, in fact opposite meanings.14 Thus we can read: vaikalyatam... 'bhaktasya or vai kalyatdm ... bhaktasya. The text testifies to the pilgrimage to Ramtek and worship of Narasimha (the deity of the temple in which the inscription is found) by a certain Sa(?)rngadevason of Kamadeva. The Srinrhariwho is praised may, besides the obvious Narasimha, also be the Yadava king Simhana whose name marks him as a' lion among men '. Sarngadeva is called tdrkikasekhara,which excludes the possibility of his being identical with the musician Sarfigadeva, author of the who worked at the court of the Yadava king Simhana and SamgTtaratndkara, whose father we know to have been Soddhala.'5 The first sloka is an invocation of the goddess Sarasvati. When we resolve the slesa, however, we read the poet's own praise. Moreover, it would seem that the philosopher and poet in referring
2cf. Med. Ind. Pal., 11,'Nagari' (W. & S. India, Yadava, 13th century). One of the few deviations appears to be the alternative form of ra. 13 Swamikannu Pillai, 1982, table 1. '4 Lienhart, 1984, 186. 15Samgltaratndkara 1. 5.
to Sarasvati's (Goddess of Learning, i.e. 'learning') descent from Trivikrama (i.e. Visnu) are making a pun on their own lineage. It is well-known that the members of the distinguished and learned family that traced its origin back to Trivikrama held important offices at the court of the Yadavas, notably Cafigadeva, who was the astronomer of king Simhana. 6 Sarfigadevacould have been a member of the family. This ancestral Trivikrama, who belonged to the Sandilya gotra, is called kavicakravartin 'Prince of the Poets' in the Patna inscription,'7 and he is, in all likelihood, identical to the author of the viz. Trivikramabhatta, who flourished at the Nalacampu or DamayantTkathd, beginning of the tenth century A.D.'8This excludes the possibility that the poet Trivikrama mentioned in the present inscription who is said to sing the praise of Sarfigadeva, which might be taken to mean that Sarngadeva commissioned him to compose this inscription for him, is the same as the ' Prince of the Poets ' who wrote the Nalacampu. Consequently, there were two poets Trivikrama, one living in the tenth century, the other in the middle of the thirteenth. Like the first, the second Trivikrama apparently made use of the campu style of composition. This result with respect to agrees perfectly with the results of an investigation of Mirashi 19 the author of the Maddlasdcampu,who earlier had been generally held to be identical with his namesake, the author of the Nalacampu. Mirashi has argued convincingly that the poet Trivikrama who wrote the Madalasacampu,and who was a devotee of Visnu rather than of Siva as was the author of the Nalacampu, was not the author of the Nalacampu, who in his introduction 'tells us that he was born in the Sandilya gotra and was the son of Devaditya (v. 1. Nemaditya) and grandson of Sridhara.' 20 According to Mirashi, the second Trivikrama, who does not give any particulars about his descent in his work the Madalasacampu, is 'much inferior' as a poet and wrote 'apparently in a much later age .21 If our identification of the poet Trivikrama of the inscription with the author of the Maddlasdcampuis correct, this ' later age' can now be determined as the middle of the thirteenth century, he may have been also the author of a verse quoted in Jalhana's SiuktimuktdvalT 172, v. 13)22, which was composed (p. in the court of the Yadavas in A.D. 1258. The possible hint at Trivikramabhatta in the first sloka of the inscription makes it conceivable that the second Trivikrama was well aware of his illustrious predecessor whose style he sought to imitate. Finally, in the third verse the inscription testifies to the importance that was attached by that time to the worship of Rama. Apart from the samudgayamaka, this verse, like the first two, may also contain a slesa, since' Rama' was also the name of the chief general of king Simhana who had succeeded his father Kholesvara in his military profession and who was killed in an expedition against Gujarat in the year of the present inscription or shortly before it.23
16EI, I(1892), 338-46; Pingree, 1970-81, III, 39f. 17 I, 340, 343. EI, ,8Kielhorn in EI, i, 340; Bhandarkar, in EI, ix (1907-8), 28; Yazdani, 1960, i, 596; Lienhart, 1984, 267. '9Mirashi, 1964 b. 20ibid., p. 2. 21 ibid., p. 6; cf. Lienhart, 1984, 268. 22 See Sternbach, 1978-80, 387, s.v. 'Trivikrama II'. 23Amba Inscription (A.D. 1240) in Arch. Survey of Western India, IIl, 85-93 (by Biihler). A similar double-entendre is found in the Amba inscription which records the erection of a RamaNarayana temple to commemorate the death of general 'Rama' who is praised by his aunt (Laksmi) in the following ambiguous words: p(r)audhas tyage sa ramo nayavinayaviddm agraganyas sa rdmo sauryasvami sa ramo sa sa harapadakamaladhydnadhlrah rdmah. lanikhddhlsas rdma
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