Indo-Iranian Journal 62 (2019) 191–226 brill.com/iij The Badoh-Pathari Saptamātṛ Panel Inscription Dániel Balogh British Museum
[email protected] Abstract Located in Vidisha District, Madhya Pradesh, the area of Badoh-Pathari is home to a rock shelter with a sculpted panel depicting seven mother goddesses. A weathered inscription next to the sculptures was reported as early as 1926. The inscription is date- able to the fifth century on the basis of its palaeography and the art-historical dating of the site. Though partly effaced beyond hope of decipherment, roughly half of the text can be read with confidence, while some of the rest may be restored conjecturally, and some speculatively. The epigraph pays homage to Rudra and Skanda in addition to the Mothers themselves, and is thus a key resource concerning mātṛ worship in the Gupta period. It mentions the otherwise unknown local ruler Jayatsena of Avamukta (a region also named in the Allahabad pillar inscription), and may refer to the reign of Kumāragupta (I). Keywords Badoh-Pathari – Saptamātṛ – mother goddesses – Gupta period – Eastern Malwa – San- skrit epigraphy 1 Introduction Off the beaten path in Eastern Malwa there is a pair of villages, Badoh and Pathari. The surrounding landscape (Fig. 1) is dotted with monadnocks that tell a tale of geological time, microliths in the soil speak of human prehistory, rock paintings bridge the gap to history, and stone monuments—some now hidden in the soil—bear witness to the Gupta period and later historic times.1 Because 1 The environs have been extensively described by Anne Casile (2007, 2014).