Kaśināth Kṛṣṇa Lele, normally cited and referred to as K. K. Lele (d. circa 1935),Mentioned as deceased in 1939, see Ganpat Rao Gopal Khondekar, “Gopal Sambhaji," Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 3 (1939), pp. 1283–90. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/44252474. was a civil servant in Dhar State, a Princely State in the Central India Agency of British India. Early in his career, in 1887, he took over the educational department in Dewas State, introducing reforms and opening a number of schools.C. E. Luard, Western States (Mālwā) Gazetteer, Volume V.- Part A, Text, p. 54. URL: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.35238/page/n73/mode/2up?q=Lele. In 1899, he shifted to Dhar State where he was appointed tutor to the Rājā of Dhār.C. E. Luard, Western States (Mālwā) Gazetteer, Volume V.- Part A, Text (Bombay: Printed at the British India Press, Byculla, 1908), p. 54. URL: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.35238/page/n73/mode/2up?q=Lele. He also served as Director of Education in Dhār State.C. E. Luard and K. K. Lele, The Paramāras of Dhār and Mālwā (Bombay: British India Press, 1908). On the title page of this work he is shown as: "Formerly Director of Education in Dhār State." In anticipation of the visit of Lord Curzon to Dhār in 1902, Captain Ernest Barnes, the political agent, formed an archaeological department and placed Lele in charge in September 1902.Ernest Barnes, “Art. XI. - Dhar and Mandu,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Bombay Branch 21 (1904), pp. 339-91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10949373; C. E. Luard, Western States (Mālwā) Gazetteer, Volume V.- Part A, Text (Bombay: Printed at the British India Press, Byculla, 1908), p. 400. URL: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.35238/page/n463/mode/2up?q=Lele.
Lele was a gifted scholar of Sanskrit and had particular interests in epigraphy, publishing a number of articles on the inscriptions in Dhār state.For example, K. K. Lele, “Fragment of an Inscribed Hymn of Sarasvatī found at Mandu,” ABORI 8, no. 1 (1926), pp. 142–44; K. K. Lele, “A Fragmentary Inscription of Maṇḍu,” ABORI 11, no. 1 (1930), pp. 49-53, this apparently his last published work. He was responsible for recovering the Kodaṇḍakāvya from the Kamāl Maula campus in Dhar and arranging the fragments in the museum in Dhār fort (now a museum under the jurisdiction of the Directorate of Archaeology, Museums and Archives, Madhya Pradesh). Much of his work on Paramara-period inscriptions was collected and published by his nephew, C. B. Lele.C. B. Lele, Parmar Inscriptions in Dhar State, 875-1310 AD, Dhar State, Historical record series, v. 1 (Dhar: [Department of History and Museum, 1944]). Of published work in his lifetime, the most wide-ranging was The Paramāras of Dhār and Mālwā, appended to the Dhār State Gazetteer but released only as a separate volume.C. E. Luard and K. K. Lele, The Paramāras of Dhār and Mālwā (Bombay: British India Press, 1908). The title page says "Reprinted from the Dhār State Gazetteer," but overleaf it says: "This account of the Paramāra rulers of Mālwā was drawn up for the Dhār State Gazetteer, but was only printed in the separate volumes issued for the use of the Darbār." He also co-authored History of Dhar State : Modern Period with S. K. Oak.K. K. Lele and S. K. Oak, History of Dhar State : Modern Period (Dhar: Itihas Kachery Sansthan, 1926).
Lele's most significant discoveries were inscriptions in the Kamal Maula masjid: the Kūrmaśatakadvayam, two poems praising Kūrma in PrakritR. Pischel, ed. Kūrmaśatakadvayam: Two Prakrit poems on Tortoise who supports the Earth, translated with selected glossary by V. M. Kulkarni, introduction by Devangana Desai (Ahmedabad, 2003). This is not the Kūrma incarnation, but rather the primal tortise Ādikūrma. An open access copy is available through JainQuantum. and the Vijayaśrīnāṭikā, a drama by the poet Madana for his patron Arjunavarman (c. 1210-15).S. K. Dikshit, ed., Pārijātamañjarī alias Vijayaśrī by Rāja-Guru Madana alias Bāla-Sarasvatī (Bhopal, 1968). Other inscriptions examined by Lele are discussed in Saarthak Singh, “Serpentine Scimitars and Sarasvati’s Speech: The Materials of Knowledge in Medieval Malwa, c.1100–1400,” Arts Asiatiques 79 (2025), pp. 5-30. A concise and informative analysis of the dramatic inscription is given by H. V. Trivedi.H. V. Trivedi, Inscriptions of the Paramāras, Chandēllas, Kachchapaghātas and Two Minor Dynasties, 2 parts. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 7, part 1 (New Delhi: Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, 1991), p. 194. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10878801. Lele's views about the Vijayaśrīnāṭikā were circulated in a report dated 30 December 1903, subsequently printed and published in full by S. K. Dikshit in 1968.S. K. Dikshit, ed., Pārijātamañjarī alias Vijayaśrī by Rāja-Guru Madana alias Bāla-Sarasvatī (Bhopal, 1968), pp. xvii-xxiv. Because a number of the literary inscriptions found at Dhār had colophons attributing the works to Bhoja, Lele coined the term 'Bhojshālā' for the Kamāl Maula masjid, a building that was popularly known as Rājā Bhoja's madrasa in his time.Ernest Barnes, “Art. XI. - Dhar and Mandu,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Bombay Branch 21 (1904), p. 350 used the term, Barnes's paper first read in June 1902. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10949373; C. E. Luard, Western States (Mālwā) Gazetteer, Volume V.- Part A, Text, (Bombay: Printed at the British India Press, Byculla, 1908), p. 498. URL: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.206907/page/n583/mode/. The term 'Bhoja Shala' already appears in this work, see p. 496. The fact that Vijayaśrīnāṭikā opens with an invocation to Sarasvatī has prompted the idea that the Bhojshala was sacred to this goddess. Although this association cannot predate Lele's discovery of the Vijayaśrīnāṭikā in November 1903, it has led to social tensions and a legal case that reached the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 2024.Ishita Mishra, “Madhya Pradesh HC orders ASI survey of Bhojshala complex,” The Hindu (March 11, 2024). Thus Lele's research and historical interpretations, conducted more than a century ago, continue to have significant implications.
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