Photograph, with scale, of inscription . Taken in the Hanoi Museum by Arlo Griffiths on .
Photograph, with scale, of inscription . Taken in the Hanoi Museum by Arlo Griffiths on .
Photograph, with scale, of inscription C. 137. Taken in the Hanoi Museum by Arlo Griffiths on 17 September 2009.
Photograph of EFEO estampage n. 159.
Photograph of EFEO estampage n. 159.
Photograph of EFEO estampage n. 159.

C. 137 Pedestal from Trà Kiệu

Please note: you are reviewing a preprint version of this publication. Contents here may change significantly in future versions. Scholars with specific interests are urged to consult all cited bibliography before using our texts and translations or drawing other significant conclusions.

Support Cube-shaped pedestal; sandstone (not, as reported by Huber and repeated by Finot and by Cœdès, "basalte noir"); h. 36 cm × w. 44.5 × d. 44.5.

Text Four lines on one face written in Sanskrit.

Date 6th century Śaka (7th CE).

Origin Settlement of Trà Kiệu (Quảng Nam).

This piece was found by a certain Rougier at Trà Kiệu before 1911, when it entered the EFEO Museum in Hanoi. Its inventory number B 2, 31 at the Museum was published in Finot 1915a: 17; whence, in the inventory of Campā inscriptions published in 1923, this local number was included under the entry C. 137 (Cœdès 1923). We identified the stone in the Bảo Tàng Lịch Sử Việt Nam (National Museum of Vietnamese History) at Hanoi in 2009 and following years, as the one bearing inventory number LSb 21182. The Museum assumed the new name Bảo Tàng Lịch Sử Quốc Gia (National Museum of History) in 2011, but this did not entail a change in the inventory number.

Edition(s) First published, with French translation, in Huber 1911: 262-264; whence, with English translation, in Majumdar 1927: 13-14;1 whence Golzio 2004: 11. Re-edited from the EFEO estampage, with new translation, in ECIC V: 429-434, whence the present edition.

Facsimile

  • Estampage: EFEO n. 159

The following text was edited by Arlo Griffiths and Dominic Goodall.

(1) ((siddham))
IĀryāgīti
śaktiḥ parasya na ripuṁ kṣapayati gamitāpi daṇḍabhedabhayena
(2) [ya]sya tv adaṇḍabhedā sakalam arim abhīr bhinatti śaktibhṛta iva ||
IIĀryāgīti
(3) sa śrīprakāśadharmmā nṛpatiḥ kandarppadharmmaṇo dharaṇibhujaḥ
(4) s[v]apitāmahīpitur idaṁ sthāpitavān arcanāya pādukayugalam· ||

IIc s[v]apitāmahīpiturprapitāmahīpitur Huber. Although Huber (who used the same estampage as we do) marked no uncertainty of reading, no trace is visible of the subscript r under the consonant that he reads as p. This consonant must, however, quite certainly be read as s, for it shows the distinctive diagonal bridge between the two verticals. Although damage to the stone just below the s has removed every trace of a subscript consonant, the only contextually permissible reading seems to us to be sva°, so we have restored the now invisible subscript v in place of r.IId pāduka°haṭaka° Huber.

Translation

I. The power (śakti) of [his] rival destroys no enemy, even when it is brought near by the fear of (political manoeuvres such as) punishment or sowing of dissension. — But the one whose dauntless [spear (śakti)], like that of the spear-wielder [Skanda himself], destroys every enemy without its shaft ever breaking (adaṇḍabhedā), — But the one whose [mere] gesture of protection (abhī), without need of resorting to [the political manoeuvres of] punishment or the sowing of dissension, has brought low every enemy, as though he were in fact holding a spear (śaktibhṛta iva), — But the one who is like Skanda and for whom [the power (śakti) of Śiva, in initiation (cf. the term śaktipāta)], arousing no fear and resorting to neither punishment nor sowing of dissension, has broken every [internal] enemy,

II. namely the king Śrī Prakāśadharman, has installed this pair of footprints in order to praise king Kandarpadharman, the father of his paternal great-grandmother.

Commentary

We assume three levels of punning (śleṣa) in the first stanza. The first two play on the possibility of taking śaktibhṛt either literally, or as epithet of the war-god Skanda; on the possibility of interpreting abhī in two different ways; and on the different possibilities of analyzing the compound adaṇḍabhedā. The third sense may be less obvious to most readers. But in a footnote in the Preface to his edition of the Parākhyatantra (p. xix, n. 17), Dominic Goodall has discussed Śaiva punning on the words śakti (spear or power, of king, Skanda or Śiva) and ari (enemies, worldly or internal) in a late-7th-century inscription of Pallava king Narasiṁha II. He has there provided textual references in support of taking arivarga ‘group of enemies’ as denoting the human senses or passions (a theme also alluded to in C. 173), and referred to a passage illustrating the (descent of) divine power (śaktipāta) as crucial element in Śaiva tantric initiation.

In further support of the assumption of this third sense, he has shared with us his interpretation of a stanza in a somewhat later inscription. This is K. 528 (Eastern Mebon, 953 CE, edited in Finot 1925: 309–352), stanza XX, about King Rājendravarman, and it comprises three crucial elements that we also see in ours:

āsādya śaktiṁ vivudhopanītāṁ māheśvarīṁ jñānamayīm amoghām kumārabhāve vijitārivarggo yo dīpayām āsa mahendralakṣmīm ||

‘After attaining the Power (or: weapon) of Maheśvara (Śiva) that consists in Knowledge, that is never failing (viz. after attaining initiation) [and that has been] transmitted by the gods, being in youth (or: as crown-prince, or: as Kumāra, i.e. Skanda) one whose enemies (or: passions) were conquered, he caused the glory of Mahendravarman to shine.’

Mahendra is both the name of King Rājendravarman's father, Mahendravarman, and a name of the god Indra, whose enemies Skanda destroyed. So there must here be a reference to Skanda getting hold of (āsādya) his famous weapon, called Śakti (though not always clearly a spear), and destroying Indra's enemies (which was the reason for his birth being plotted by Indra in the first place). Most words can be accounted for in that layer of meaning, but the words māheśvarīṁ jñānamayīm defy multivalent interpretation, and vibudhopanītāṁ suggests that he gained his famous weapon from the gods. There is almost certainly a myth that recounts such a handover, but we have not been able to find it. What we do find is that Viśvakarman is said to have fashioned Guha's Śakti using bits of radiance of the sun (in Viṣṇupurāṇa 3.2.12), and that certainly suggests that some god must then have handed it to him. What is plain is that in one level of meaning the verse refers to Rājendravarman, like Prakāśadharman, having received Śiva’s salvific grace (śakti), in other words tantric initiation.

Our new reading s[v]apitāmahīpitur makes Kandarpadharman the father of Prakāśadharman’s paternal grandmother (rather than the father of his paternal great-grandmother).

Notes

  1. The meter of the two stanzas is here misidentified as Āryā.