(1) Oṁ Samvat 8। Śrī-Mahīndrapāla। rājyābhiṣe-
(2) -ka। Sauḍi Riṣi putra Sahadevasya.
"Om, the year 8 (from) the coronation of Mahīndrapāla. (The gift) of Sahadeva, the son of the Riṣi (Ṛṣi) Sauḍi (Sauri)."
Mahendrapāla, in the ninth or tenth centuries A.D., immediately suggests the name of the son of Bhoja I, the great Pratihāra Emperor Mahendrapāladeva. A comparison with the Asni inscription of Mahīpāla confirmed me in the opinion that no other person than the great Pratihāra monarch was being referred to. The forms of P and J are very much similar to those used in Asni inscription and the Ghosrawan inscription of Devapāla. Moreover, the form of the name is identical with that used in the Asni inscription, where we find the name as Mahīndrapāla, and not Mahendrapāla as in other inscriptions. Dr. Fleet read this name as Mahīṣapāla.[1] I saw a beautiful impression of this inscription in the Allahabad exibition of 1910-11, and there the name is clearly legible as Mahīndrapāla. Another inscription of Mahendrapāla is to be found at Gunariya, near the Grand Trunk Road, in the Gayā District, which was brought to notice by Major Kittoe. Kittoe's drawing of the inscribed portion of the sculpture is very clear and the record can be edited from it:—
(1) Ye dharmmā hetu prabhavā hetun = teṣāṁ ta-
(2) -thāgato hy = avadat teṣāṁca yo nirodho evaṁ vā-
(3) -dī mahāśramaṇaḥ। Samvat 9 Vaiśākha.
(4) śudī 5 Śrī-Guṇa-
(5) -carita Śrī-Mahīndrapā-
(6) -ladevarājye devadha-
(7) -rmmeyaṁ . . .
Kittoe found a third inscription of this king somewhere in Bihār, but as he did not state the exact locality, it is no use searching for it. Some day it will come up as a new discovery of some one who chances to stumble on it. According to Major Kittoe this inscription was dated in the 19th year of the king:—
"One mentions the fact of the party having apostatized, and again returned to the worship of the Śākya, in the 19th year of the reign of Śrī Mahendrapāladeva."[2] There are two votive inscriptions of Mahendrapāladeva in the British Museum. One of these records the erection, most probably, of an image by a Buddhist monk named Kusuma in the ninth year of Mahendrapāla.[3] The nature of the contents of the other inscription is not known, but it is dated in the second year of Mahendrapāladeva. It may be that the third inscription mentioned by Major Kittoe, has found its way, by some means or other, into the British Museum. As for the reading of the date, there need not be any difficulty about that, as Kittoe's readings are invariably faulty. So we have definite proof that in the eight and ninth years of the king Mahendrapāla, Magadha formed an integral part of the Gurjara-Pratīhāra Empire, which at that time extended from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. [4]
