North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

BHĀRAT KALĀ BHAVAN PLATE OF PARAMARDIDĒVA

TEXT¹

No. 138 ; PLATE CXXV

BHĀRAT KALĀ BHAVAN PLATE OF PARAMARDIDĒVA

[Vikrama] Year 1247

THIS plate is now in the Bhārat Kalā Bhavan attached to the Hindu University, Vārāṇasī, and is reported to have been purchased, as already stated above,¹² some fifteen years ago from one Thakurdas Jain, a resident of Ṭīkamgaḍh, the chief town of a district of the same name in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh. The original find-spot of the plate is not known, nor is it possible to know it as the person from whom it had been purchased is now no longer living. The inscription on it has been edited by Dr. D. C. Sircar. in his article “Three Chandēlla Charters”, published in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXXII (1958-59), pp. 126 ff., with transcript in Roman characters and a facsimile. It is edited here from two impressions, one of which I owe to Rai Kṛishṇadāsjī, the founder-Curator of the Kalā Bhavan, and the other, kindly supplied to me by the Chief Epigraphist, Archaeological Survey of India, to whom the plate was some time back sent for examination.

It is a single copper-plate, inscribed on one side only, and measures about 43∙5 by 29 cms. All round the inscribed surface, flat copper-strips about 1 cm. broad are fastened on to it very tightly by means of copper-rivets, which are now broken at some places, leaving only the holes bored for them. The plate is heavy, and the letters, though they are deeply cut, are not seen through on the reverse side. The plate is in a perfect state of preservation ; and together with the border-bands and nails it weighs 2 kgms. and 220 gms. The size of the letters varies from 1 to 1∙5 cm.

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¹ From an impression.
² Denoted by a symbol.
³ Most probably this consonant appears to have been marked.
⁴ Both the bracketed letters are deformed but the reading is certain.
⁵ What looks like the sign of anusvāra above sa is an original fault of the stone, as some others below. The sibilant that follows it is cut with its left lower limb detached.
⁶ Ta is incised as na.
⁷ The visarga sign is faintly and partly visible here, and it was read by Cunningham as the sign for medial ē. This and the following words are adjectives of Sīhaḍa.
⁸ The syllable Śrī is now almost distorted and hence the reading of it as taken by Cunningham has to be adopted here.
⁹ This letter and the whole of the last line are now lost, and the reading is from Pl. xii-C in Cunningham’s A.S.I.R., Vol. XXI.
¹⁰ Read Ṭhakkura. The first of the daṇḍas is incised quite close to the preceding syllable and with the same top-stroke as on ṭha. The implication
of the figures that follow is not clear. Saṅkaliā, from the sense, appears to be the name of a place in this region, as we know also from Nos. 121 and 128.
¹¹ The two figures that follow this name were read by Cunningham as 53 but in the accompanying plate the second figure appears as 2. Nothing
can be definitely said now as the whole line is completely lost.
¹² See Nos. 119 and 134, above.