Khajuraho Hanuman inscription

The Khajurāho Hanumān inscription is an epigraphic record on the base of a colossal figure of Hanuman, located at the temple site of Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, India. The inscription dates to the tenth century CE. The Hanumān is under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India, being listed as a monument of national importance.[1]

Khajuraho
town
Khajuraho
Khajuraho
Coordinates: 24.85°N 79.93°E / 24.85; 79.93
CountryIndia
StateMadhya Pradesh
DistrictChhatarpur
Elevation
283 m (928 ft)
Population
 (2011)
 • Total1,762,857
Languages
 • OfficialHindi
Time zoneUTC+5:30 (IST)

Location

The inscription is on the base of a well-known image of Hanumān at Khajurāho. Because the figure is under worship and the shrine renovated, the inscription is not presently visible.

Publication

The inscription and the image of Hanumān are frequently mentioned in the literature on Khajurāho.[2] The inscription was first noticed by Alexander Cunningham in the nineteenth century.[3] D. R. Bhandarkar revisited the inscription in 1904 and published a new reading, in addition to a fresh interpretation of the date.[4]

Description and Contents

The inscription is written in Sanskrit in three lines. The style of the characters supports a date in the tenth century CE.

Hanumān Inscription at Khajurāho

Historical Significance

The Khajurāho inscription is of great importance for the history of Hinduism because it gives a date of 316. This is taken by historians to refer to the Harṣa era, giving thus a date of 922 in the common era. While there are certainly figures of Hanumān that are older than the tenth century, this inscription makes the Khajurāho image the oldest dated Hanumān currently known.

Metrics

Text

The uncorrected text reads as follows:

Left side:

  1. oṃ gollāgāhīlapūtrasya
  2. saṃvatsro °300 10 6° māghaśudi 10°
  3. śrīhanumantaṃ g[o]llākaḥ praṇamati

Right side:

  1. gahilasya sutaḥ śrīmānhanumānpa
  2. vanātmajam aṇukṛod dharmmam ā-
  3. lokya gollākāprākataṃ harim

Translation

part I

  1. oṃ. [The record of] Gollā, son of Gāhīla.
  2. The year 316 on the 10th day of the bright fortnight in the month of Māgha.
  3. Gollāka bows to Śrī Hanumān.

part II

  1. Gollāka, the son of Gahila, having beheld the umanifest Hari,
  2. afterward made this religious work, the glorious Hanumān, the son of the wind.
gollark: Well, ++experimental_qa uses a 44MB neural network running very slowly on my server's few-hundred-GFLOPS CPU. According to GTech™ bee scientists, human brains are at least 10PB and require/contain 10PFLOPS of computing power.
gollark: ...
gollark: ++experimental_qa bike Who has the bike wheel?
gollark: Fascinating.
gollark: ++experimental_qa cube How many faces does a cube have?

See also
  • Indian inscriptions

References
  1. See http://www.asibhopal.nic.in/monument/all_monument2.html
  2. Devangana Desai, The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho (Mumbai, 1996): 21 and figure 19.
  3. Cunningham, ‘XXII. Khajuraho’, ASIR 2 (1862-65): 437 where he tenatively suggests a date of 925.
  4. Government of Bombay, General Department. Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey of Western India, for the year ending 30th June, 1904.
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