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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI No. 134 ; PLATE CXXI THIS copper-plate, which is now preserved in the Bhārat Kalā Bhavan Museum of the Hindu University, Vārāṇasī, is said to have been purchased, along with some others,[1] from a resident of Ṭīkamgaḍh, the head-quarters of a district in Madhya Pradesh, some fifteen years ago. The provenance of the plate is not known but it appears to have been obtained by the dealer somewhere in the surrounding region, as we shall see below. The inscription on it was edited by Dr. D. C. Sircar, with its transliteration in Roman characters, and a facsimile, in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXII (for 1958-59), pp. 123 ff. and plate facing p. 126. It is edited here from an inked impression which was kindly supplied to me, at my request, by Rāi’ Kṛishṇadāsjī, the founder Curator of the Museum.[2] It is single plate, incised on one side only, and measures about 39∙2 cms, in length, 29∙5 cms. in height and ∙2 cm. in thickness. To protect the writing, flat copper-bands, about 1 cm. broad and ∙3 cm, thick, are rivetted on all the four borders of the inscribed surface. This rivetting is done by means of copper-nails, five each at the top and the bottom, and four on each of the other two sides. The plate, together with the border-bands and nails, weighs 3 kgms, and 274 gms. The writing covers a space about 36 by 25∙5 cms. and contains 20 lines, which are in a good state of preservation. In the middle of the first four lines is a rectangle, 5 by 6∙5 cms., containing the representation of the four-armed goddess Lakshmī seated on a full blown lotus, and on her either side is an elephant sprinkling water over her head. Similarly, the writing is also interrupted in the last line, by a vacant space, about 4 cms. long, which is apparently intended for a hole that would have been required, if the inscription would have been continued on a second plate. The average size of the letters is 1 cm., except in the last three lines where it reaches up to about 1∙5 cms.
The alphabet is Nāgarī, bearing a general resemblance to that of the Sēmrā and the other grants which were engraved by the same mason who incised the present grant.[3] And the palaeographical peculiarities too are more or less the same as we notice in them. For example, ṅ continues to be devoid of its dot ; see jaṅgama-, l. 7, but the dot is marked in –aṅka, l. 9 (if it is not an original fault on the plate) ; dh and r show a transitional stage ; the first of these letters, e.g., is incised with a horn on its left limb in dhṛita-, l. 1, and without it in vādhā, l. 16 ; and the second, i.e., r, which has assumed its fully developed form as in the modern Nāgarī, survives in a few instances in its form resembling v, e.g., in ripu, l. 5, and is occasionally also marked with a wedge, as in parama, l. 4. Besides these, we may also not that ch is often confounded with v, as in vaṁsaśchandra-, l. 1,[4] and bh with t, as in bhāga-bhōga-, l. 14 ; and lastly, ṇ as a latter member of a conjunct consonant is written as l ; see bhrājishṇu, l. 2 and utkīrṇṇa, l. 20. Slovenliness in marking the sign of anusvāra and of the mātrās above, continues as in the preceding grants, e.g., a redundant anusvāra is put on ma in –mabhyarchya, l. 10 whereas it is not cut on the last letters in likhita and utkīrṇṇa, both in the last line.
The language of the inscription is Sanskrit ; it is generally correct, excepting a few minor
types of mistakes which have been corrected in the text below. And leaving the initial verse and
three imprecatory and benedictory verses in ll. 17-19, the whole record is in prose. The orthography shares the same peculiarities as of those records issued in the contemporary times, viz., (1) to denote b by the sign for v; cf, vādhā, l. 16 ; (2) the doubling of a consonant following r, as
in durvvishaha, l. 5 ; (3) the use of the dental for the palatal sibilant in vaṁsa, l. 1 ; and (4) occa- [1] Nos. 119 and 138. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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