Bhoj Shala

The Bhojshala (IAST: Bhojaśālā, sometimes Bhoj Shala, meaning 'Hall of Bhoja') is an historic building located in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, India. The name is derived from the celebrated king Bhoja of the Paramāra dynasty of central India, a patron of education and the arts, to whom major Sanskrit works on poetics, yoga and architecture are attributed. The term ''Bhojashala'' became linked to the building in the early 20th century; the architectural parts of the structure itself date mainly to the 12th century, with the Islamic tombs in the campus added between the 14th and 15th century.

Bhojshala is presently an archaeological site under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India, but over the last century it has become a site disputed between Hindus and Muslims. The exploration of the location since the 19th century has yielded information on medieval religions particularly of Hinduism and Jainism. The general precinct around the Bhojshala is also the location of four Sufi tombs. The hypostyle hall was built primarily from temple pillars and parts around 1390 CE, while the original tomb of Kamal al-Din Malawi (c. 1238-1330) is older., Quote: "Next to the tomb is a spacious hypostyle mosque built primarily of reused temple parts (Fig. 3)." The Muslims use the building for Friday prayers and Islamic festivals, while the Hindus pray on Tuesday. The Hindus also seek to pray to goddess Sarasvatī at the site on Vasant Panchami festival, and this been a source of Hindu-Muslim tension when Vasant Panchami falls on a Friday.Indore celebrates Basant Panchmi
The Times of India, February 2, 2017

History: King Bhoja

King Bhoja, who ruled between ''circa'' 1000 and 1055 in central India, is considered one of the greatest kings in the Indian tradition. He was a celebrated patron of arts, and out of reverence for him, Hindu scholars that followed traditionally attributed a large number of Sanskrit works on philosophy, astronomy, grammar medicine, yoga, architecture and other subjects to him. Of these, a well studied and influential text in the field of poetics is ''Śṛṅgaraprakāśa''. The core premise of the work is that Sringara is the fundamental and motivating impulse in the universe.

Along with his literary and art support, Bhoja began constructing a Shiva temple at Bhojpur. If it had been completed to the extent he planned, the temple would have been double the size of the Hindu temples at the Khajuraho Group of Monuments. The temple was partially completed, and the epigraphical evidence confirms that Bhoja founded and built Hindu temples.

One of Bhoja's successors was king Arjunavarman (''circa'' 1210-15). He and many others, in Hindu and Jain traditions, held Bhoja in such high regard that they stated or were revered as a reincarnation (rebirth) of Bhoja or Bhoja-like ruler. Centuries later, Bhoja remained a revered figure as evidenced by Merutuṅga's '' Prabandhacintāmaṇi'' completed in the fourteenth century, and Ballāla's ''Bhojaprabandha'' composed at Varanasi in the 17th century. This tradition continued, and in the 20th century, Hindu scholars described Bhoja as an example of the glorious past of their historic culture and a part of Hindu identity. The capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, is named after him, i.e. ''Bhoj-pāl'' but some trace the name to ''Bhūpāla'', a Sanskrit word meaning king, literally, 'Protector of the Earth.'

Dhār and Inscriptions in the Bhojaśālā

The archaeological sites at Dhār, especially the inscriptions, attracted the early attention of colonial Indologists and historians. John Malcolm mentioned Dhār in 1822, along with building projects such as the dams planned and completed by King Bhoja. The scholarly study on the inscriptions of Bhojśālā continued in the late nineteenth century with the efforts of Bhau Daji in 1871. A fresh page was turned in 1903 when K. K. Lele, Superintendent of Education in the Princely State of Dhār, reported a number of Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions in the walls and floor of the pillared hall at Kamāl Maula. Study of the inscriptions has been continued by various scholars to the present. The variety and size of the inscribed tablets at the site, among them two serpentine inscriptions giving grammatical rules of the Sanskrit language, show that materials were brought from a wide area and a number of different structures.

''Rāüla vela'' of Roḍa

John Malcolm mentioned that he removed an inscribed panel from the Kamāl Maula. This appears to be the Rāüla vela of Roḍa, a unique poetic work in the earliest forms of Hindi. This inscription was kept first in The Asiatic Society of Mumbai and was later transferred to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai.

The ''Kūrmaśataka''

Among the inscriptions found by K. K. Lele was a tablet with a series of verses in Prakrit praising the Kūrma or Tortoise incarnation of the god Viṣṇu. The ''Kūrmaśataka'' is attributed to king Bhoja but the palaeography of the record itself suggests that this copy was engraved in the twelfth or thirteenth century. The text was published by Richard Pischel in 1905–06, with a new version and translation appearing in 2003 by V. M. Kularni. The inscription is currently on display inside the building.

The ''Vijayaśrīnāṭikā''

Another inscription found by K. K. Lele is part of a drama called ''Vijayaśrīnāṭikā'' composed by Madana. The preceptor of king Arjunavarman, Madana bore the title 'Bālasarasvatī'. The inscription reports that the play was performed before Arjunavarman in the temple of Sarasvatī. This suggests that the inscription could have come from the site of a Sarasvatī temple. The inscription is currently on display inside the building.

Grammatical inscriptions

The building also contains two serpentine grammatical inscriptions. These records prompted K. K. Lele to describe the building as the Bhojśālā or Hall of Bhoja because king Bhoja was the author of a number of works on poetics and grammar, among them the ''Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa'' or 'Necklace of Sarasvatī'. The term Bhojaśālā was taken up by C. E. Luard and published in his ''Gazetteer'' of 1908 although Luard noted that it was a misnomer. That the term Bhojśālā is due to Lele is shown by the writing of William Kincaid, in his "Rambles among Ruins in Central India," published in the ''Indian Antiquary,'' in 1888. This makes no mention of the term Bhojśālā, noting only the ''Akl ka kua'' or "Well of Wisdom" in front of the tomb of Kamāl al-Dīn. Kincaid was a cynical observer but in any case the absence of the term Bhojśālā in his text indicates was "no living tradition about the Bhojālā in the middle decades of the nineteenth century" among those with whom he interacted.

Sarasvatī

After Lele and Luard had identified the Bhojaśālā with the Kamāl Maula, O. C. Gangoly and K. N. Dikshit published an inscribed sculpture in the British Museum, announcing that it was Rāja Bhoja's Sarasvatī from Dhār. This analysis was broadly accepted and had a significant impact. The statue in the British Museum was often identified as Bhoja's Sarasvatī in the years that followed.

The inscription on the sculpture mentions king Bhoja and Vāgdevī, another name for Sarasvatī. The word 'Vāgdevī' literally means the goddess of speech, articulation and learning. However, later study of the inscription by Indian scholars of Sanskrit and Prakrit languages, notably Harivallabh Bhayani, demonstrated that inscription records the making of a sculpture of Ambikā after the making of three Jinas and Vāgdevī. In other words, although Vāgdevī is mentioned, the inscription's main purpose is to record the making of an image of Ambikā, i.e. the sculpture on which the record is incised.

Text and Translation

(1) auṃ , srīmadbhojanāreṃdracaṃdranagarīvidyādharī dharmmadhīḥ yo ----- amaged portionkhalu sukhaprasthāpanā-
(2) y=āp(sa)rāḥ vāgdevī ṃprathama ṃvidhāya jananī pas āj jinānāṃtrayīm ambā ��nityaphalā(d)ikāṃ vararuciḥ (m)ūrttim subhā ��ni-
(3) rmmame ñāika_sivadevena_likhitam_iti_, ,
(4)_saṃvat_100_91_ Vararuci