Victorious is the Supreme Lord Śiva, the radiance of whose toenails pādanakhaprabhā — vanquished the quiveringly radiant crest-jewels of the multitude of diadems of the gods — made moonlight to appear āviṣkr̥tacandrakāntiḥ on their heads tanmūrddhasu.
May the two Lords of the gods, namely Śrī Īśāna and Śrī Viṣṇu, be victorious! By the uniting of their body-halves, immanence, oneness and plurality are made manifest among gods and mortals.
About him yam uddiśya, Fame seemed to say vaded itīva: “With his mouth, this Lord of ours protects Wisdom; with his chest Śrī; with his feet Earth, because of his great good fortune; but tu I am unlucky adhanyā, because yad I have evidently hi been cast kṣiptā far aside dūram”.
Victorious is the lord of the earth Śrī Īśānavarman, whose commands were carried on the head by all the vassal kings,
whose glory °śrīḥ and heroism °parākrama° are those of Indra who is the unique sovereign °ekarāja° on the surface °pr̥ṣṭha° of the golden earth °suvarṇabhūmi°, up to the oceans samudraparyanta°.
or
whose glory °śrīḥ and heroism °parākrama° are those of a king of kings who is alone on the surface °pr̥ṣṭha° of the golden earth °suvarṇabhūmi°, up to the oceans samudraparyanta°.
or
whose glory °śrīḥ and heroism °parākrama° are those of a king of kings who is alone on the surface °pr̥ṣṭha° of the earth, which is of beautiful color °suvarṇa°, up to the oceans samudraparyanta°.
or
whose glory °śrīḥ and heroism °parākrama° are those of a king of kings who is alone on the surface °pr̥ṣṭha° of the land which is named Suvarṇa up to the oceans samudraparyanta°.
Now api a servant of his received samadhatta the name Vrau Etta, which was dictated by his own spiritual master, after his the servant’s elder brother had installed Śrī Puṣkareśa, the one without beginning and the first among the gods.
Out of personal devotion svabhaktyā toward his spiritual master, he installed the sister bhaginīm of Murāri as well as Śrī Śarva and Śrī Govinda. He also api established single enjoyment of offerings ekabhogaḥ among these three deities, namely Svayambhudevī, Bhava and Keśava.
‘For these three gods installed here, the number of servants, once added up together saṁpiṇḍitā, shall be three hundred, and the same too of cows; that number for the fields and buffaloes is thirty; for each of the three individually pratyekam there is a garden.’
A unique lamp in his own lineage, the man named Vrau Etta gave all these things, beginning with cows, land and wealth, to the gods in this place belonging to good families pade kulānām, offered up upārjitāni for the sake of the meritorious foundation dharmārtham.
After the donor yajvan has given wealth to the three gods here, whoever, out of greed, will have sma taken away harati this wealth will fall into hell along with his descen-dants and remain there until the destruction of movable and immovable beings.
When the year of the Śaka king had emerged from the 5 arrows śara, the 5 arrows and the 5 arrows, when it was the first night of the waxing moon of Caitra, when the Moon was in Aśvinī, the ascendant partly linked with Gemini maithuna in Tula, while the Sun and other planets which make a moment auspicious, i.e. Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn were respectively in Pisces mīna, Aries aja, Vīnā ?, Pisces jhaṣa, Capricorn mārga, Aquarius kumbha and Sagittarius cāpa — that is when the donor properly installed the images of Śrī, Hara and Kr̥ṣṇa here.
In Angkorian epigraphs, the image of vassal kings bowing down at feet of the king and the light of the latter’s toenails mixing with the light from their crest-jewels is widely used.
For this construction with yad, compare, e.g., Raghuvaṁśa 3.25: yad āha dhātryā prathamoditaṁ vaco yayau cāṅgulim | abhūc ca namraḥ praṇipātaśikṣayā pitur mudaṁ tena tatāna so ’rbhakaḥ, “Because he spoke the words his nurse had spoken first, because he walked hanging on her finger, and because he bent when he was taught to bow, the child brought joy to his father.”
The expression śrīśānavarmmā jayati kṣitīśaḥ is also found in the second stanza of K. 80 7th century CE, Vat Prei Veng/ Svay Chno, Dangko District, Phnom Penh. In that stanza, King Īśānavarman is described as a glorious king of three kings bhūpatrayasyoruyaśo vidhātā, a possessor of three cities bhoktā nagaratrayasya and comparable to Lord Hara Śiva. We also learn from the last two stanzas, st. III and IV, that Vidyādeva established a hermitage āśrama and offered servants, cows and plantations of areca and coconut. This inscription seems to be composed in the same spirit as the one we edit here. A systematic study of the inscriptions under the reign of King Īśānavarman such as K. 80 is a desideratum.
In Khmer version, we propose other two possible interpretations as follows:
whose glory °śrīḥ and heroism °parākrama° are those of a king of kings who is alone on the surface °pr̥ṣṭha° of the land called Suvarṇabhūmi up to the oceans samudraparyanta°.
or
whose glory °śrīḥ and heroism °parākrama° are those of a king of kings who is alone on the surface °pr̥ṣṭha° of the earth [which is in the] Suvarṇabhūmi up to the oceans samudraparyanta°.
For a historiography of the term Suvarṇabhūmi, see our comment in the Khmer version of this article. In this volume, Vong Sotheara also discusses this term at length from a historical point of view.
Vrau Etta may be a name with a beneficent connotation. For a discussion on this name, see Michel Antelme’s article in Khmer in the next issue of Kambuja Suriya.
According to D. Goodall personal communication, December 2019, this seems to be the name of a Viṣṇu with a Śaiva-sounding element, see the remaks of A. Griffiths 2005 on the Vaiṣṇava theonym Tribhuvaneśvara in K. 1214. The installation of the god Puṣkareśa is also mentioned in two contemporary inscriptions, K. 121 638 śaka, Preah Theat Kvan Pir, Kratie province and K. 765 601 śaka, Prasat Neang Khmau, Takeo province.
D. Goodall personal communication, December 2019 thinks that Svayambhudevī is the name of the goddess, who is presented as the sister of Murāri, perhaps because she is thought of as Subhadrā and the last stanza might be taken to suggest that the Viṣṇu is a Kr̥ṣṇa here, but perhaps also because Viṣṇu gives Pārvatī to Śiva when Śiva marries her as represented, e.g., in South Indian Kalyāṇasundaramūrtis, and the goddess, both in Cambodia and in Tamil Nadu, bears cakra and śaṅkha even when she appears in Śaiva contexts.
It is most probable that vīnā is to be corrected into vīṇā which generally means ‘Indian lute’ but in astrology, according to M. Monier-Williams 2005: 1005 it can refer to a particular configuration of the stars when all planets are situated in seven houses. Nevertheless, the meaning does not seem to fit in this context, where a name of a zodiac sign is expected.
The shape of bhū of the word bhūḫ is different from what we see in lines 4 and 15, which can be explained as due to limitation of space in the present context; anyhow, the consonant part seems to have been engraved with hesitation, leading to its imperfect realization.
Regarding the word yadāśvīnīśītakaro, for the meter and for the sense we need to read śvi here.