1835.] on the Temple of Harsha, in Sehdvatl. 369 



tion of the chief brahmans of the temple and their predecessors. The 

 princes were but donors and benefactors, but these world-renouncing 

 men are represented as the actual builders, whose spiritual genealogy 

 from preceptor to pupil, the author proceeds to trace. The line when 

 apparently degenerating, is described as reformed by the zeal and 

 devotion of one who is an incarnation of the god Nandi' himself, the 

 greatest of Siva's attendant deities, — and who, in his mortal state, 

 received command to erect this magnificent temple in the sacred 

 mount of Harsha, — a work, however, which was not completed by 

 himself, but by his pupil. After some descriptions and panegyrics, 

 in which due mention is made of what excites the admiration of all 

 beholders of the ruins at this day, the conveyance of the huge stones of 

 the building to this mountain height, the poetical part of the inscription 

 ceases : and the minute account of the year, the month and the day, in 

 which the work was begun and ended, is followed by a list of 

 benefactors of various degrees, kings and subjects, with their several 

 donations of lands to the temple. The whole is concluded with a verse 

 eulogizing benefactions of this nature, and adjuring all future princes, 

 in the name of the great Ra'ma, to preserve them inviolate. 



The last king Vigraha is very probably the Yaso-Vigraha of Capt. 

 Fell's Benares inscription, the head of the family whence sprung 

 the last (Rahtore) kings of Kanyakubja or Kanoj : though Wilson's 

 calculation of only 24 years each for four generations would bring 

 that chief to A. D. 1024, fifty years after the date of this monument, 

 (A. R. vol. xv. p. 461.) But for the same distance of time, deduced 

 from more certain data, I should have been led to identify Vigraha's 

 younger brother, whose name occurs in the 26th verse of the inscrip- 

 tion, with a prince who in the same year 1024, in conjunction with 

 another Indian chief called Brahma Deva, nearly turned the tide of 

 victory against Mahmu'd Ghaznevi, after his rapid march from 

 Ajmeer to Somanath, by arriving seasonably to assist his Guzzeratti 

 countrymen ; and whom Mahmu'd, after his reduction of that place, 

 apprehending as a formidable enemy, took prisoner with him to his 

 capital beyond the Indus ; whence being sent back to a kinsman of 

 his own, who had been left viceroy of Guzzerat, he succeeded by a 

 most remarkable adventure, in possessing himself of the kingdom of 

 that country. Certainly this prince, whom Ferishta calls (as well as 

 his kinsman) Da'bsheli'm*, is called by other authorities, Hindu and 

 Mahomedan, Durlabha, the same name as that here assigned to the 

 warlike brother of Vigraha. 



* Dow, vol. i. pp. 74, 79, 82.— Briggs, toI. i. pp. 70—80.— Ayin 

 Acbery, vol. i. pp. 82, 86. 

 3 a 



