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Bhojaśālā or Bhoj Shala
The Bhojaśālā or 'Hall of Bhoja' is a term used to describe the centre for Sanskrit studies associated with king Bhoja, the most celebrated ruler of the Paramāra dynasty in central India. Since the early years of the 20th century, the Kamal Maula Masjid in Dhar has been identified as the site of the Bhojaśālā. This has turned the location into a focal point of communal tension since at least 1952.

Bhoja's reputation
There can be little doubt that king Bhoja, who ruled between circa 1000 and 1055, was an exceptional ruler by medieval standards. Tradition has ascribed a large number of works on philosophy, astronomy, medicine, yoga, architecture and other subjects to Bhoja, the most extensive in the field of poetics being the Śṛṅgaraprakāśa. He began the temple at Bhojpur, near Bhopāl, a building with the largest Śiva liṅga in India. If completed, the temple would have been twice the size of those at Khajuraho. Bhoja enjoyed a high reputation among his immediate successors with king Arjunavarman (circa 1210-15) claiming that he was a reincarnation of Bhoja himself. Post medieval histories give some idea of his character and ambitions, notably Merutuṅga's Prabandhacintāmaṇi, completed in the early years of the fourteenth century. Post-medieval narratives, such Ballāla’s Bhojaprabandha, composed at Benares in the 17th century, extolled Bhoja's greatness, a tradition that was picked up in the 20th century as India searched for indigenous cultural heroes. In the words of K. K. Munshi, '... during Bhoja’s rule civilization in Mālwā had risen to a magnificent pitch. Our appreciation of Bhoja for having portrayed a faithful picture of the most glorious period of medieval Indian History [in the Śṛṅgāramañjarīkathā] is heightened when we take into consideration that he worked and stood for all that was glorious in Hindu Culture’. As a consequence, any site or object connected with Bhoja is culturally potent and intimately connected with modern Hindu identity.

Dhār and the Bhojaśālā
In 1903, K. K. Lele, Superintendent of Education in the Princely State of Dhār, found a Sanskrit and Prakrit inscription from the time of Arjunavarman in the walls of the Kamal Maula Masjid at Dhār. The text of the inscription includes part of a drama called Vijayaśrīnāṭikā composed by Madana, the king's preceptor who also bore the title 'Bālasarasvatī'. Although the inscription reports that the play was performed before Arjunavarman in the temple of Sarasvatī, there is no clear evidence whether the inscription comes from the site of the mosque or was brought from elsewhere in Dhār in the 15th century whn the mosque was built. The variety and size of pillars used to make the mosque, and other inscribed tablets recovered by Lele from the site, among them a serpentine inscription giving grammatical rules of the Sanskrit language, suggest that materials were collected from old sites over a wide area. The finds, particularly of the grammatical inscription, prompted Lele to describe the building as the or Bhojaśālā because king Bhoja (circa 1000-55) was the author of a number of works on poetics and grammar, among them the Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa or 'Necklace of Sarasvatī'. The term Bhojaśālā, was first published by C. E. Luard in the Gazetteer of 1908. Being an offical publication, Luard's statements have been repeated in more rent gazeteers and have enjoyed popular currency even though Luard himself noted that the term 'Bhoj Shala' was a misnomer. No earlier oral tradition for the Bhojaśālā has been found, suggesting that the current tradition about the building has been created retroactively from the gazetteers. William Kincaid, who spent most of his life in the region and records many folk stories about Bhoja, published his notes on Mandu and Dhār in 1879. In this he mentions the 'Akl ka kua' or 'Well of Wisdom' beside the tomb of Kamal Maula, observing, in passing, that the custodian of the tomb was a very talkative person. Of the mosque, however, he only says 'close by is a small masjid'. Although this is not entirely conclusive, Kincaid's statments indicate that there was no oral tradition to record about the Bhojaśālā in the 1870s.

Sarasvatī
After Lele identified the Bhojaśālā with the Kamal Maula Masjid, O. C. Gangoly and K. N. Dikshit published an inscribed sculpture in the British Museum, announcing that they had discovered king Bhoja's Sarasvatī from Dhār. . O. C. Gangoly was a celebrated art historian and K. N. Dikshit the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, so their views had a significant impact and have enjoyed popular currency. The British Museum sculpture has been repeatedly identified as Bhoja's Sarasvatī, most notably by C. Sivaramamurti, one-time director of the National Museum of India. Some writers, such as K. K. Munshi and V. Raghavan, have also asserted that British Museum sculpture was from the Kamal Maula Masjid. This is incorrect. Already in 1943, C. B. Lele, who direct access to the source materials, reported that the sculpture had been found in the debris of the old city palace in 1875.

The inscription on the sculpture is damaged, but it is clear that it mentions king Bhoja and Vāgdevī, another name for Sarasvatī. A more complete and careful study of the inscription was undertaken by H. C. Bhayani, a well-known Sanskrit and Prakrit scholar. This was published in 1981 in an article co-authored with Kirit Mankodi. This showed that inscription records the making a sculpture of Ambikā after the making of three Jinas and Vāgdevī. In other words, although Vāgdevī is indeed mentioned, the inscription's main purpose is to record the making of an image of Amibkā. That the sculpture is Ambikā is confirmed by the iconographic features, notably the lion and elephant goad. The text of the inscription has been subject to further study and the reading is as follows: (1) auṃ | srīmadbhojanāreṃdracaṃdranagarīvidyādharī[*dha] rmmadhīḥ yo - [damaged portion] khalu sukhaprasthāpanā- (2) y=āp(sa)rāḥ [*|] vāgdevī[*ṃ] prathama[*ṃ] vidhāya jananī[m] pas[c] āj jinānāṃtrayīm ambā[ṃ] nityaphalā(d)ikāṃ vararuciḥ (m)ūrttim subhā[ṃ] ni- (3) rmmame [||] iti subhaṃ || sūtradhāra sahirasutamaṇathaleṇa ghaṭitaṃ || vi[jñā]nika sivadevena likhitam iti || (4) saṃvat 100 91 [||*] Auṃ. Vararuci, king Bhoja's religious superintendant (dharmmadhī) of the Candranagarī and Vidyādharī [branches of the Jain religion] of srīmad Bhoja the king,  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.

In mentioning three Jinas, the text of this inscription indicates that the Vāgdevī at Dhār was dedicated to the Jain form of this deity. This is confirmed by Merutuṅga in the Prabandhacintāmaṇi. This reports that Dhanapāla, the celebrated savant and author, showed king Bhoja eulogistic tablets in the Sarasvatī temple engraved with his poem to the first Jina. Because an inscribed poem to the Jina would only appear in a temple sacred to Jainism, the presence of the inscription shows that the Vāgdevī at Dhār was indeed the Jain form of the goddess. Coincidentally, this shows that Merutuṅga often provides reliable historical facts, something questioned by western scholars in the 19th century.

The current location of king Bhoja's Sarasvatī remains a mystery. There are famous and ancient Sarasvatī temples at several locations in India, notably Maiharin eastern Madhya Pradesh and in Kashmir. The latter is known as the Sharada Peeth and was visited by the western Indian scholar Hemacandra in the 11th century. The Solanki and Vāghelā rulers sacked Dhār repeatedly in the dying days of the Paramāra regime, removing the libraries to their own cities where many Paramāra texts were copied, studied and preserved to this day. The inscription of Vīsaladeva from Kodinar dated 1271 records the creation of a pleasure garden (ketana) and college (sadas) sacred to Sarasvatī. This suggests that in addition to removing books, the western Indian kings also took away the sacred image of Sarasvatī, installing it in a new temple in Saurashtra.

British Museum