203 
1SG1.] A Donative Inscription of the Tenth Century. 
II. Udayaditya, son of B.* 
liad been put to death in pursuance of his orders, — as his victim’s last words, are 
these : 
W^TrTT * Jiff: 
- ft ^ J ft ^ 
T^TT^rt: UT^T ^SITHJT^: I 
?5» -V ^ -N 
JTcTT «!W II 
<c King Mandhatri, the ornament of the golden age, has passed away : and 
where, too , is the slayer of Das'asya, R&ma, who threw a bridge over Malio- 
dadhi, the southern sea ? All other monarchs , likewise, that have flourished, 
Yudhishthira and the rest, where are they ? None of these did the earth accom- 
pany : but I imagine that it will accompany thee.” 
These lines are wrought into the Bhoja-prabandha. An earlier work in which 
they occur is the S' arngadhara-paddhati , written in A. D. 1363. There they 
appear as an anonymous extract. Their substance, as given by Abulfazl, ac- 
cording to the version of Mr. Gladwin, is : “ What kind of man art thou, who, 
from the darkness of thy soul, stainest thy hands with the flood of the innocent ! 
No monarch hath carried with him, at his death, either kingdom or treasure; 
but you suppose that your reign is to be immortal, and that you will experience 
nothing but happiness.” Ayin-i-Akbari \ Vol. II,, p. 46. This is, indeed, free 
handling with a witness. 
Largely as the vogue has prevailed of placing reliance on the Bhoja-prabandha i 
it is strange that any person imbued with the smallest spirit of criticism can 
avoid to class it, for all historical purposes, with such vouchers as the Letters 
of Phalaris and the Book of Judith. Now that its age is settled, there will 
henceforth be less apology than ever for deeming it other than a ‘collection of 
silly legends. Speaking of its author, Dr. Aufrecht says : “ De Ballalae aetate 
haec comperi. Filium Banganatham, nepotem Vis'warupam habuit, qui astro- 
nomi seculo septimo decimo ineunte vixerunt. Ipso, igitur, exeunte seculo 
sexto decimo floruit.” Catalogus Cod . Manuscript. , Sanscrit ., Pars. I., p. 151. 
It is of very slight importance that Colonel Tod . refers the Bhoja- char lira to 
Bajavallablia, disciple of Mahitilaka Suri, a Jaina, and adds : “ He is also the 
author of the Blioja-prabandha. When and where he wrote, though not speci- 
fied, may be presumed to have been at Dharanagari, while Baja Bhoja was still 
alive.” Transactions of the Boyal Asiatic Society, Vol. I , p. 219. On this 
there is the following annotation by Colebrooke : “ The epigraph of the Bhoja - 
prabandha , according to most copies of it, names Ballala as the author. But, in 
some copies, the name of Yallabha appears. Mr. Wilson considers both to 
have been by several centuries posterior to Baja Bhoja.” Again : “ It is not 
altogether likely that the Bhoja-charitra and Bhoja-prabandha should have 
been works of the same author. The discrepancies are too great to have come 
from the same pen.” 
Colonel Tod’s informant, it is reasonable to conjecture, was a Jaina ; and the 
Jainas are unscrupulously given to arrogating as their own, persons and things 
to which they have no good right. Vikramaditya, if we are to believe them, 
was of their communion ; and so was Bhoja. Nor do they stop here. One of 
their claims, in particular, is of the absurdest. Malayagiri, in his gloss on the 
Nandi-siitra i declares that Mahavira wrote the Vedas. To bear out this de- 
claration, he cites, ridiculously enough, the ensuing invocatory verse, as from the 
grammar of S'akatayana, or else from its author’s exposition of his text : 
* In one inscription, that from Nagpoor, Udayaditya is literally called son of 
Bhoja j and in another, which also was accessible to Professor I.assen, the lan- 
guage marking their relationship is such as to preclude all misgiving. 
2 D 
