Although its history is only sporadically documented in Sanskrit inscriptions, the Aulikara dynasty of western India (ancient Avanti) is of interest as belonging to a critical period in the history of northern India during the declining days of the Gupta empire and the Hun invasions. This volume presents detailed editions and studies of 30 inscriptions (fifteen “major inscriptions”, ten “minor inscriptions”, and five previously “unpublished” inscriptions), all from Mandsaur (or Mandasor; ancient Daśapura, in eastern Madhya Pradesh) and surrounding areas, dating from the late fifth to the late sixth centuries ce. The major inscriptions are typical praśasti (eulogistic) records, composed in classical kāvya style and inscribed on structural stone slabs or free-standing pillars. The inscriptions are presented in complete editions including text, translation, and detailed commentary, except for the five previously unpublished inscriptions, which are given in partial or preliminary form, often because they are illegible or inaccessible.
The editions are carried out with extreme care in all respects. As far as possible the author has prepared superior new images based on his extensive fieldwork. The texts are presented first as a “diplomatic text” following the line-by-line arrangement and punctuation on the original stone, then as a “curated” text set up as numbered verses with the meter identified, compound junctures indicated by hyphens, and detailed footnotes on the readings. Each inscription is preceded by a detailed commentary, amounting in some cases to a verse-by-verse analysis.
Most of the inscriptions were previously published, including several known since the early days of Indian epigraphical studies and edited and translated by renowned epigraphists such as J.F. Fleet in his volume of Gupta inscriptions (Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum III, 1888). Nonetheless, Balogh has managed to propose improvements and corrections of “the occasional error in the original edition” (p. vi), legitimately claiming that “I do believe that I have corrected many small mistakes” (p. vii). For example, in the frequently published “Mandsaur inscription of the silk weavers”, he proposes to read sarvva-dikṣūdāram instead of sarvam atyuddāram of previous editions (line 20, verse 37b; p. 108).
Besides the editions, the volume includes preliminary chapters on dates and dating, palaeography, and history, along with scrupulously detailed palaeographic (p. 12) and genealogical (p. 28) charts. Two helpful appendices, “Prosopography” and “Gazetteer”, are a welcome addition to the usual repertoire of epigraphic compilations.
The author shows throughout a fine sensitivity to the subtleties of Sanskrit kāvya. He is well equipped to pass judgement on the quality of the various texts and is not shy about doing so. For example, he opines that Vatsabhaṭṭi, composer of the aforementioned silk weavers’ inscription, “attempted to follow the standards of high kāvya at a level that exceeded his technical skill. His metaphors and similes are in many places forced, and … not elegantly expressed” (p. 91). But Balogh's evaluations are not one-sided: he adds that in the same inscription “there are some saving graces … in the form of creative ideas elegantly expressed” (ibid.), and he credits the Sondhni pillar inscription of Yaśodharman as “a truly impressive piece of programmatic poetry” (p. 179).
Balogh also notes subtleties of the structure of these compositions, as in his discussion of the aesthetic effect of the introductory maṅgala śloka of the same inscription, describing the might of Śiva's bull. He points out that this verse untypically opens with the main verb, vepante, “they (sc. the far horizons) tremble”, which “clearly sets the tone for most of the text” (p. 180). He then traces the effects of the subsequent words until the closing ketuḥ, the principal subject deferred until the end of the long sragdharā verse, creating both a riddling structure and a building tension. Balogh further notes the predominance of “harsh consonants … evocative of the clanging of weapons” and enhancing the raudra rasa (“furious sentiment”) of the verse. Here as throughout he strives for a vivid style of translation that echoes or at least approximates the power of the original; compare Balogh's stirring translation of the first half of the verse (vepante yasya bhīma-stanita-bhaya-samudbhrānta-daityā digantāḥ śr̥ṅgāghātaiḥ sumeror vighaṭita-dr̥ṣadaḥ kandarā yaḥ karoti), “The far horizons tremble, their demons frenzied in fear of his frightful roar! Rocks tumble down the cliffs of Mount Meru from the impact of his horns!” (p. 184) with Fleet's pedestrian “… who causes the distant regions, in which the demons are driven wild with fear by (his) terrible bellowings, to shake; (and) who makes the glens of (the mountain) Sumêru to have their rocks split open by the blows of his horns!” (p. 147).
Thoroughness and attention to detail are exhibited in the long discussion (pp. 61–4) of a single verse (no. 23) in the Gangdhar inscription, reviewing and evaluating various interpretations of the word tāntra and its significance for the history of tantric practices. Balogh doggedly researches technicalities such as botanical terms rather than resorting to standard translations or leaving them untranslated, as in his note on rodhra (p. 107 n. 166), justifying his translation “gooseberry”.
Whereas Balogh's contributions to the study of previously published major inscriptions are largely limited to matters of detail, an important exception is his edition of the fragmentary stone inscription of Kumāravarman. This was previously published only in a short preliminary edition (without translation) by V.V. Mirashi in 1983, and Balogh's new edition and first translation are vastly superior. Mirashi, assuming that the missing portion was small, calculated the total number of verses as 32. But in his section “Reconstructing the tablet's width” (pp. 212–6) Balogh shows in detail, by estimating the number of missing syllables on each line, that the lost section was actually larger than the surviving one, so that the inscription originally contained at least 50 verses.
This book is a model of detail-oriented philological and epigraphical work that other scholars working in these fields would do well to emulate.
