ABSTRACT
An interesting feature of the donative records is the relative rarity of examples of royal donations to religious institutions, though donors occasionally refer to reigning kings with a view to accurately dating their respective acts of patronage. Female donors, quite prominent in votive inscriptions from many other places, are conspicuous by their absence at ancient Bandhogarh. The Bandhogarh inscriptions are also silent about presence of srenis or occupational guilds who are quite prominent in donative records elsewhere. Donors desire that let dhama, i.e. dharma and punya (merit) be increased (vadhatu). The desire is of course that merit be accrued to the patron as result of his patronage or dana. Acts of patronage seen at ancient Bandhogarh and at many other religio-cultural centres of early historical times may logically be brought to category of purttadharma. Patrons of purttadharma were by and large people from different walks of life who did not necessarily enjoy very high ritual status as per jati-varna norms.
