Return to Dashapura

IN MARCH 1884, John Faithfull Fleet, the first epigraphist of the (British) Government of India, sent a team of copyists to Mandsaur. Over the past several decades, archaeological digs in the region had yielded a glut of inscriptions and other records related to the Gupta era. A momentous find was the Mandsaur stone inscription. Realising its significance, Fleet personally travelled to Mandsaur in February 1885.

In one shot, the inscription helped establish the accurate dating of the Gupta dynasty. He published its full text, translation and commentary first in 1886 in the Indian Antiquary, Vol 15. Technically known as ‘Gupta Inscription No. 18, Plate XI’, it unravelled a whole new world. For the next two decades, the inscription became the subject of intense discussions. The Mandsaur stone inscription is a lovely cultural tapestry of the Hindu culture and society of the golden age of our history.

Dated 473CE, it records the restoration of a magnificent Sun Temple in Mandsaur by a guild of silk weavers. Its real significance is couched in its details spread over 24 elegant Sanskrit verses.

Mandsaur is an ancient city predating even the Gupta Empire. Its original name, Dashapura, survived in its corrupt form, Dashor, up to the early 20th century. Fleet makes an interesting revelation in this regard: “In some bilingual sanads or warrants, of about a century and a half ago, I found this form, Dashor, used in the vernacular passages, while the Persian passages of the same documents give the form Mandasor. So also, Pandits still habitually use the form Dashapura in their correspondence.” The colonial British administration preferred Mandsaur over Dashapura and spelt it variously as Mandesar, Mandasor, Mandesur, Mandsaur, etc.

Dashapura is mentioned in the Puranic literary and folk annals. One legend traces its founding to Dasharatha. Kalidasa extols the beauty of the city in his fabled Meghaduta. But a more realistic explanation is found in its very name.

Dashapura was originally a vishaya (a taluk or district) comprising 10 (dasha) hamlets. Fleet found the same administrative structure in his time too. The archaeologist Bhagwanlal Indraji supplies the historical reason for the change in nomenclature from Dashapura to Mandsaur. Its original name was Manda-Dashapura, meaning “the distressed Dashapura, in commemoration of the overthrow of the town, and the destruction of the Hindu temples in it, by the Musalmans, in memory of which, even to the present day, the Nagar Brahmans of the place will not drink the water there.”

At the height of the prestige of the Gupta Empire, Dashapura was also fabled as Paschimapura. The aforementioned stone inscription narrates its splendour in detail. It was authored at the beginning of the decline of the Gupta Empire.

Around the first decade of the fifth century, a guild of silk weavers from the Lata country (corresponding to Bhavnagar, Bharuch, Surat, Navsari) migrated to Dashapura, “being attracted by the virtues of the kings of that country.” Kumara Gupta I was the monarch, and Bandhuvarman was his governor in Malwa, to which Dashapura belonged. Over time, these silk weavers earned respect in the city and contributed to its prosperity. Some of them embraced other professions: archery, storytelling (kathavachaks), philosophy, astrology, astronomy and military. Still others became ascetics.

The inscription repeatedly extols their accomplishments and purity of character: “The guild shines gloriously… through people who are of this sort, and others who, overcoming the attachment for worldly objects, have become ascetics.”

This silk weavers’ guild constructed a magnificent Sun Temple in Dashapura in 436- 37CE. Bandhuvarman, “the high-shouldered king”, inaugurated it. The guild sought no public donations but built it with the generational wealth it had accumulated.

The death of Kumara Gupta I heralded an ugly saga of internecine wars for the Gupta throne over three decades. An unfortunate fallout of this was that the Sun Temple fell into disrepair. It was finally restored to even greater glory in 473CE, the year in which the silk weavers’ guild had the pious event inscribed on stone. The inscription does not mention the disturbances that had caused damage to the temple; it simply says, “In the course of a long time, under other kings, part of this temple fell into disrepair ; so now, in order to increase their own fame, the whole of this most noble house of the Sun has been repaired again by the munificent corporation.”

John Fleet’s team found the inscription on a dark sandstone slab “built into a wall on the right-hand halfway down a small flight of steps leading to the river in front of a mediaeval temple of… Mahadeva, at the Mahadeva-Ghat, which is on the south bank of the [Siwana] river”, opposite the Mandsaur Fort.

The Mandsaur stone inscription, housed in the Yashodharman Museum, has been hailed as one of classical India’s greatest cultural treasures. It sheds light on the socio-political-economic condition of the era, the devotional life of the people and the evolution of Hindu temple architecture.

To cite a random instance, the Gupta era was perhaps the last in which surya (sun) enjoyed such primacy. The post-Gupta epochs were gradually dominated by the Trimurtis, Ganesha, Devi, etc.

The historian RC Majumdar has written a short commentary on this inscription and hails it as an exemplar of the system of business guilds that operated throughout India since Kautilya’s time.

“This highly interesting inscription, couched in verses that recall the best days of Sanskrit Kavya Literature, has preserved…a vivid account of one of the best specimens of the ancient guilds that constituted such a remarkable feature of ancient Indian society. It invalidates the notion…that guilds were stereotyped close corporations of craftsmen, busy alone with their own profession and little susceptible to culture or progress. It portrays… a picture of a guild of silk-weavers, proud of their own profession, and true to their own organisation, but displaying within these limits an activity and keenness for all-round progress…”

An even more valuable insight from Majumdar relates to the social mobility represented by the silk weavers’ guild. In their original home in Lata, all members were silk-weavers, but after migrating to Mandsaur, they branched off into other professions.

“It distinctly points to the mobility of the body, and more importance is evidently attached to the unity of the guild, than the place where it settles. This is an evidence of the high state of guild-organisation, for none but a fully organised body could thus shift from place to place and yet retain its unity and public confidence.”

Such examples abound throughout the history of the classical era, which show a highly fluid Hindu society that offered unhindered scope for inter-Varna movements. This flexibility was disrupted and destroyed by Islamic invasions.

On another plane, the Mandsaur stone inscription is an early instance of Hindu civilisational and cultural resilience. The silk weavers’ guild patiently waited for 35 years for the political instability to end and then revived the temple on a much grander scale. We see the same story in Somnath, where five years after Mahmud of Ghazni’s despoilation, the temple was rejuvenated in a more audacious manner by the Hindu community of the city. The underlying thread in all such cases is the same: as a united community, Hindus can build, revive and manage their sacred structures without governmental interference.

Postscript

The Sun Temple still exists in a dilapidated condition at Khilchipura, about 30km southwest of Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh. Derelict. Uncared for. Forgotten. The contrast between its sacred celebrity described in the inscription and its present reality exacerbates the pain of the pious pilgrim who visits it.