Discovery of Gujarra
Harry Falk, Aśokan Sites and Artefacts A Source Book with Bibliography, Verlag Philipp von Zabern GmbH Mainz 2006
Gujarrā
Siddhoṁ kī toḍiyā
Datia District, MP 25°35' N. 78°33' E. GSI map 54 K/10
Access: On the road from Datia to Unnāva (Unnao) near milestone 13 the country road branches to the west, right at the northern border of the village Parāśarī. After 4km the village of Gujarrā is met, where the car has to be parked. The white roof of the shelter can be seen about 300 m to the north of the village, right under the hill called siddhoṁ kī toḍiyå, “hill of the perfect ones”. All roads are good to tolerable. The stone is under a concrete shelter with four sides enclosed by iron bars. The door is usually locked. The key to the gate is in the possession of Jagdish Singh Patel of Gujarrā village, who keeps it for the custodian Jaffar Khan of Unāo Bālajī. Discovery: “The inscription was discovered by Mr. Lal Chand Sharma, a forest contractor of Jhansi, who by chance came upon the inscribed rock while out a-hunting. Mr. Sharma showed some indistinct photographs and inaccurate eye-copies of the record to Dr. B.Ch. Chhabra, Deputy Director-General of Archaeology in India, at New Delhi, on the 30th November 1953. A glance at them was enough for Dr. Chhabra to recognise that the epigraph was one of the Rock Edicts of the celebrated Maurya emperor Aśoka (c. 269 232 B.C.) and naturally he pressed Mr. Sharma for information regarding its exact findspot (...). But Mr. Sharma, who was under the impression that the document contained a clue to the existence of a hidden treasure in its neighbourhood, was not prepared to give the required information unless Dr. Chhabra would agree to share with him the treasure” (Sircar 1955–56a: 205, for details see Chhabra 1956). Preservation: The stone is a reddish Gneiss, turned grey on the surface; it is very hard and therefore the letters have not been incised very deeply. They seem, however, to be well preserved, for the major part at least. Measurements: Boulder: 145 x 450 cm. Edict: 62 x 280 cm. Ak¹aras: 7-8-10 cm. Orientation: The inscribed face of the rock faces south, the reader north. Because of the shelter´s roof sunlight falls on the stone only before 10 AM and after 4 PM. It is very difficult to read the ak¹aras without sunlight. Presentations of the text: Rubbing: Sircar 1955–56a: 209 = 1979: pl. XV (useless) = Office of the Chief Epi graphist, Mysore, Negative No. 7108, “Gujarra”; P彯eya 1965: pl. 29. Photography: The stone with the inked rubbing still attached to it is shown in IA-R 1954–55: pl. L, illustrating the brief information we have on its detection on page 27. Editions: Chhabra 1956: 71; Sircar 1955–56a = 1979: 86–93; S. Ram 1963–65: 155–156; P彯eya 1965: 117; Krishnan 1989: 1–4; Andersen 1990: 47–50; Rastogi 1990: 216. Literature: ARIE 1954–55: 12 B 526; R. Thapar 1961/1997: 231; P彯eya 1965: bhūmikā 6; Andersen 1990: 47. On preservation measures: IA-R 1957–58: 82; 1989–90: 162; 1990–91: 124
Importance in antiquity: Chhabra (1956: 70) pointed out that the hill is regarded by the villagers as sacred: “In one of the rock-shelters on the top of the hill there is a roughly hewn Śiva-linga which is the main object of popular worship at present.” This information is faulty. There are no rock-shelters, but only naturally hollowed rocks, and the one used for worship presently houses a natural gravel-rock li¼ga. The naturally perforated rocks (fig. 6) seem to have been the reason why the place was considered sacred, comparable to the canopy stones at Pālkīguṇḍu and Gavīmaṭh.
Importance today: The inscription is not known to have been of any importance to the local population. The inscribed rock commands one of the ascents to the hill. A natural hollow in a small isolated rock on its northern side (fig. 7) is dedicated to Śiva ˜a¼karjï and venerated by the peasants individually in times of distress. Notes on the text: Read: (B) devānāṁpiyasa piyadasino asāke rāja (There is no compound asokarāja but asāke rāja miswritten for asoke rāja. This nominative is to be construed with āhā at the end of [E]); (C) upāsaka si; (E) sādhike sa[ṁ]vacha[ra] yaṁ ca mā saṁpe ghā yite ti āhā (saṁpe is miswritten for saṁghe, ghā is angular and very broadly drawn as a result of misreading upa in the master exemplar); (I) caramīnenā, sayatenā; (J) se etāye, savaṇe; (L) aṁtaṁ; (M) cilaṁthitike, °dhaṁmaṁ ca [nothing ever followed]; (N) (5) -·-·-·-·ti / enā vā dhaṁmaṁ cara[ṁ] ati-o (The beginning of this line is completely distorted. The six or seven signs look like initial a (with missing upper arm), ḍha or ḍhi (with missing inner coil) or va/vi (without right side of cir cle), a ligature pya (very uncertain in the lower part), a small sign like a Roman v, a ji or untypical si, a ha (very angular and uncertain in its lower part) and a hook like the upper part of initial e, which could also be ga.
The last akśara of what has been read as atiyo consists of a vertical with clear -o strokes, but the lower part, though partly effaced, does not seem to have been a ya; (O) iyaṁ sāvana vivuthenā [200] 50 6. Particulars of the script: The writer tended to confound the -e and the-ā-mātrās. Particulars of the text: The last sentence is without parallel. The text was copied from a written exemplar onto the stone. In this process upa was misread as ghā.
The place is remarkably similar to Gujarrā and Niṭṭūr, where the edict stones likewise mark the beginning of the path leading to the sacred spot. As at Gujarra and Niṭṭūr the writing has been incised on the vertical side of a rock. P-56
Epigraphia Indica, Vol- XXXI, Edited by D.C. Sircar, 1956
No. 27-GUJARRA INSCRIPTION OF ASOKA
(1 Plate)