Bhojshala

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 architectural parts of the building proper are of different periods but mainly date the 12th century; the Islamic domed tombs in the wider campus were added between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Bhojshala, Madhya Pradesh

Bhojshala is presently a Monument of National Importance protected by the Archaeological Survey of India under the Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, otherwise known as the AMASR Act. The building carries the number N-MP-117 in the List of Monuments of National Importance in Madhya Pradesh/West. While Hindus and Muslims sometimes claim the site and use it for their prayers, the Republic of India has ultimate juridiction. According to Archaeological Survey of India guidelines, Muslims may pray on Friday, while Hindus may pray on Tuesday and on the festival for goddess Sarasvatī, namely Vasant Panchami. The site is open to visitors on other days. The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991 also impinges on the administration and regulation of the monument, with day-to-day rules set out in the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Rules 1959, published in The Gazette of India.

The term Bhojśālā (also Bhojshala or Bhoj Shala) became linked to the building in the early twentieth century. This name was based on the poetic inscriptions and incised geometric drawings found at the site by K. K. Lele, the Superintendent of State Education and head of the archaeology department in Dhar State. That the term Bhojśālā is due to K. K. Lele is shown by E. Hultzsch in his publication of the Dhār inscription of Arjunavarman in Epigraphia Indica of 1905-06. In this article, Hultzsch refers to a paper sent to him by Lele that described the discovery of the Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions at the 'Bhoja Shala'. The usage became established at that point. A copy of Lele's paper was secured by S. K. Dikshit, who printed it in his study and translation of Pārijātamañjarī. Concurrently, Captain E. Barnes reported only that the mosque was “known among the Hindoo population as ‘Raja Bhoja ka Madrassa’, i.e. Raja Bhoja’s school. C. E. Luard in his Gazetteer of 1908 also calls it Raja Bhoja's school, noting the term was a "misnomer." By the 1930s, however, the term Bhojśālā was well established, with rulings issued by Dhar State referring to it under this rubric.

The term Bhojśālā cannot be found sources from the nineteeth century of before. William Kincaid (Indian Civil Service), in his "Rambles among Ruins in Central India," published in the Indian Antiquary in 1888 made no mention of the Bhojśālā, noting only the "Well of Wisdom" in front of the tomb of Kamāl al-Dīn, so called because of the number of Arabic books that had fallen into the well many years before. Kincaid was a cynical observer but he lived in Malwa for two decades and had significant antiquarian interests. The absence of the term Bhojśālā in his writing indicates was "no living tradition about the Bhojālā in the middle decades of the nineteenth century" among those with whom he interacted. John Malcolm visited Dhar and reports collecting an inscription there. This is the Rāüla vela of Roḍa, now kept in Mumbai. Of the building itself, Malcolm only says that is a "ruined mosque."

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 early 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 archaeological sites at Dhār, especially the inscriptions, attracted the early attention of colonial Indologists, historians and administrators. 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 is the inscripion now described as 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. Kulkarni. 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'.

 

In 1924, some two decades after Lele 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 misidentified 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. Moreover, the inscription shows that the Sarasvatī at Dhār was the Jain form of the goddess.

Ambikā Inscription: Translation

The translation is given here for ready reference.

Auṃ. Vararuci, King Bhoja's religious superintendent (Dharmmadhī) of the Candranagarī and Vidyādharī [branches of the Jain religion], the apsaras [as it were] for the easy removal [of ignorance? by...?], that Vararuci, having first fashioned Vāgdevī the mother [and] afterwards a triad of Jinas, made this beautiful image of Ambā, ever abundant in fruit. Blessings! It was executed by Maṇathala, son of the sūtradhāra Sahira. It was written by Śivadeva the proficient. Year 1091.

Iconography

The identification of the British Museum sculpture as Ambikā is confirmed by the iconographic features which conform to Ambikā images found elsewhere. A particularly close comparative example is the Ambikā in Sehore dating to the eleventh century. Like the Dhār sculpture, the Sehore image shows a youth riding a lion at the foot of the goddess and a figure with a beard standing at one side.

Present location of Sarasvatī

The inscription on the Ambikā statue shows that the Vāgdevī at Dhār was dedicated to the Jain form of Sarasvatī. However, the Vāgdevī mentioned is yet to be located or no longer exists. Merutunga, writing in the early fourteenth century, reports that Dhanapāla, the eminent Jain author, showed Bhoja eulogistic tablets in the Sarasvatī temple that were engraved with his poem dedicated to the first Jain Tīrthaṃkara Adinātha. While the poem, the Ṛṣbhapañcāśikā, has been preserved, the tablets, like the image, have not been located.

The Chaulukya and Vaghela dynasties took an agressive attitude toward Dhār, sacking the city repeatedly in the dying days of the Paramāra regime. They removed libraries to western India where Paramara texts were copied and preserved, the Ṛṣbhapañcāśikā among them. An inscription of Vīsaladeva from Kodinar dated 1271 records the creation of a pleasure garden (ketana) and college (sadas) sacred to Sarasvatī, suggesting that in addition to texts, the kings of Gujarat also removed the sacred image of Sarasvatī and built a new temple for her, not far from Somanath.

As noted above, the building is a Protected Monument of national importance under the laws of India and is under the jurisdiction of the Archaeological Survey of India. Both Hindus and Muslims have been granted permission to use the space for their prayers by the Archaeological Survey of India. Tensions arise when the Vasant Panchami falls on a Friday. The Archaeological Survey of India attempts to assign hours to both Hindus and Muslims on such days. However, this been a source of communal friction and occasional disturbance when the religious group scheduled for the earlier time slot refuse to vacate the premises in time for the next.

Claims about the nature and history of the building have been ongoing since the early part of the twentieth century, with the authorities of Dhar State issuing rulings prior to Independence. Since then, legal challenges to the status quo have been mounted periodically, most recently in 2024 in a writ to the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The court stated that “The detailed arguments at the Bar by all the contesting parties fortify the court’s belief and assumption that the nature and character of the whole monument admittedly maintained by the Central government needs to be demystified and freed from the shackles of confusion.” The decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of India. While the outcome of the scientific investigation is awaited, K. K. Muhammad attempted to pre-empt the court's decision in a press statement published in the The Economic Times. While he rightly noted that both sides "should abide by the court's decision and honour the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991, apart from sitting together to iron out differences over such places," his assertion that the building was once a Sarasvatī temple is not supported by the evidence (see Inscriptions above, which show on balance more inscriptions related to Viṣṇu). Moreover, it is well known that Hindu sacred places have moved, a notable case being the image of Rām that was found in Ayodhya and is now in Orchha. The goddess Sila Devī in Amber Fort was likewise brought from eastern India to Rajasthan, and the shifting of sacred images is found in Jainism. The practice has deep routes in India, going back to at least the fifth century.