Community: Gupta epigraphy

Badoh Pathari (बड़ोह पठारी), Vidisha district, Madhya Pradesh.

General view of rock shelter.

The Saptamātṛkā panel is at the right-hand side of a large rock shelter with a small, possibly artificial, cave shrine and the remains of some small, later temples. It depicts seven goddesses in bhadrāsana on separate bench-like seats and, at the far left, a male figure in lalitāsana on another bench, identified as Śiva because he is ithyphallic. This row of eight is in a recessed panel carved into the rock, about 50 centimeters high and 280 centimeters wide and 60 to 120 centimeters above the current ground level, which slopes to the right. An inscription (see EDITIONS) occupies a smoothed and slightly recessed area about 100 centimeters wide and 30 tall, immediately to the right of the group. The upper edges of the sculpted panel and the inscribed one are level. There are no further associated sculptures, but the rock surface is similarly smoothed in a second panel above the inscription, where traces of a painting are discernible.

This extremely weathered inscription (see IMAGES) accompanies the Saptamātṛkā panel on Gyānnāth Hill in Badoh-Pathari (Vidisha District, Madhya Pradesh). The inscription was reported by M. B. Garde (Annual Report of the Archaeological Department, Gwalior State for Samvat 1980, Year 1923-24, p. 12) who mentioned that the name of viṣayeśvara mahārāja Jayatsena could be read in it along with a partial date, the 13th of a bright half-month. The area has been surveyed by Anne Casile and reported in “Changing Religious Landscapes in Gupta Times: Archaeological Evidence from the Area of Baḍoh-Paṭhāri in Central India,” South Asian Studies 30 (2014): 245-268; the inscription studied and published by Dániel Balogh, “The Badoh-Pathari Saptamātṛ Panel Inscription,” Indo-Iranian Journal 65, no. 3 (2019): 191-226. Please note: the Sanskrit text here is for ready reference only; readers are directed to the most recent edition in Indo-Iranian Journal, see CONCORDANCE. 

A pillar, original size not reported. Now shattered into several pieces, only one of which has been preserved. The two partial inscriptions on it, No. IN00218 and No. IN00219, were edited by Altekar as a single text, but this seems improbable as the lower inscription’s lines begin far to the left of the upper inscription’s left margin, and there is a sizeable vertical space (about the height of one line) between the two parts. The object is recorded here as multi-part, and the inscriptions are edited as separate in the (probably vain) hope that additional fragments are recovered in the future.