|
The Indian Analyst
|
|
North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI ICHCHHĀVAR COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF PARAMARDIDĒVA protection of the writing, as to judge from the impressions and also from the original plates, their ends were bordered with strips, about 1 cm. broad and obviously of copper, secured by rivets, four on each of the vertical and five on each of the horizontal sides. All the strips are now lost. The plates were originally held together by a ring passing through a hole, which is about two cms. in diameter and bored at the bottom of the first and the top of the second plate so as to disturb the writing in two lines in the middle ; but the ring is stated to have been lost, presumably also with the seal which may have been originally attached to it. The weight of both the plates together with the existing nails is 3 kgms. The inscribed surface on each of the plates measures about 30∙5 by 23 cms. The first plate contains 17 lines of writing and the second 18 lines of equal length, leaving a fair margin on all the four sides. The top of the first plate shows a crude representation of the goddess Lakshmī, seated on a lotus, and on either of her sides is an elephant sprinkling her with water from a pot held in the truck. This device, which is usually to be seen on the charters issued by the Chandēlla kings, roughly measures 5∙5 cms. long and 5 cms. high and interrupts the writing in the first four lines. The average height of the letters is l cm. They are deeply incised but are not seen on the other side of the plates which are thick. They are fairly legible and the writing is in a state of good preservation.
The characters are Nāgarī, bearing a close affinity to those of the Sēmrā grant which was written and engraved only five years before, in V. S. 1223, by the same persons who respectively wrote and engraved the present inscription, viz., Pṛithvīdhara and Pālhaṇa, who were respectively the writer and the engraver of some other grants of the house also, as to be seen on proper occasions. And though the technical execution is neat, as observed above, the work is not although faultless, for we find throughout the whole inscription the same type of slipshoḍs as in the Sēmrā grant, e.g., deforming some of the letters, omitting their limbs, and also omitting the signs of mātrā, anusvāras and the superscript r above the top-stroke. For example, m in bhūmi-, l. 27, is engraved as g. and in the same word in 1-29, and also in mata-, l. 33 and kumuda-, l. 34, it is cut as n ; the joining horizontal stroke is missing in the first instance, and the vertical stroke in the second. In vaṁśa, l. 2, the consonant of the first letter appears as ch, and the sign of the anusvāra is not marked : in varsha, l. 29, and in pārthiva-, l. 31, the sign of the superscript r is omitted ; and in utkīrṇṇa-, l. 35, the curve of the secondary ī has not come out. There are several such slips in the present and in the other grants engraved by Pālhaṇa.1 To note the peculiarity of the individual letters, attention may be here drawn to the slightly varying forms of a in ashṭa-, l. 12, atra, l. 25, and āchchhēttā, l. 29 ; to the occasional ligatured form of k in avikala, l. 8 ; to the conjunct gg appearing as gn. e.g., in svargga-, l. 28 ; to ṅ which resembles ḍ, as in vihaṅgama, l. 24 ; to ṇṇ shown by a cursive bar across the letter, cf. suvarṇṇa-, l. 30 ; and to shṇ engraved as shl, as in Kṛishṇa-, l. 16. The aksharas ch, dh and v are only occasionally distinguished, e.g., in charāchara- and Bhavānī, both in l. 15 and in samvōdha-, l. 9 ; but ch is often engraved as v ; see yāchatē, l. 32 ; dh is transitional ; for whereas in dharma-, l. 32, this letter is devoid of its horn on the left limb, in vadhū-, l. 7, the horn is prominent and joined not to its left limb but to the top of its horizontal ; in virōdhi-, l. 2, it is joined to the curve of the mātrā, and in vidhēya-, l. 21, to the sign of the pṛishṭha-mātrā. And above all, in nidhāna-, l. 23, this letter shows a top-stroke instead of the horn, which is a rare example, if not a mistake. The form of bh is occasionally confounded with that of t, e.g., in bhāvi-, l. 27 ; and lastly, r appears in all the forms as in the Sēmrā grant, e.g., whereas the ordinary form of this letter can be seen throughout in the inscription, it resembles v in narakē, l. 30, ch in Rāhu-, l. 14, and its form with a wedge can be seen in pravara-, l. 17. The subscript form of this letter is occasionally shown by a double slanting stroke, for which see grāma-, l. 10. _____________________________ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| > |
|
>
|
