North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

No. 100 ; PLATE XCV-B
NANYAURĀ COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF DHAṄGADĒVA
[Vikrama] Year 1055

THE plate bearing this inscription was found in 1872, along with another which is edited below (No. 107), by a peasant in the process of ploughing his field at the village of Nanyaurā, or Nānyaur, in the Jaitpur-Panwārī tahsīl of the Hamīrpur District in Uttar Pradesh. The plate was acquired by W. Martin, B.C.S., who presented it to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta ; and six years subsequently (in 1878) the inscription was published by V. A. Smith, with a translation of the text prepared by Pt. Prānnāth but without a facsimile, in the Journal of the same Society, Vol. XLVII, Pt. I, pp. 80 ff., which also included a note by the Pandit himself. Subsequently, the record was edited by F. Kielhorn, with a facsimile, in the Indian Antiquary, Vol. XVI (1887), pp. 201 ff., with his own reading of the text from an impression made and supplied to him by J. F. Fleet, with a fresh translation and facsimile, and also with the remark that his reading of the text ‘would be found to differ considerably from that of his predecessors’.^[5] The plate is stated to have been made over some time subsequently, to the Indian Museum by the Asiatic Society to which it had been presented by Martin, as stated above ; and it is regretted that all my efforts failed to know anything about its present where abouts.^[6] And, as no impression of the inscription could now be available, it is edited here from the photo-lithograph accompanying Kielhorn’s article in the Volume of the Ind. Ant., referred to above.

   It is a single copper-plate, incised on one side only, and measures about 14¼” (36∙20 cms.) by 7¾” (19∙7 cms.). Kielhorn described the plate in the following words: “The edges of it were turned up, so as to form a high raised rim all round, which was fastened, by fusing, at two of the corners, but not at the other two. The plate is rather thin ; and the letters, being fairly deep, shew through very plainly on the back of it. The engraving is good ; but, as usual, the interiors of most of the letters show marks of the working of the engraver’s tool. ─There is no ring-hole in the plate, for a ring with a seal attached to it ; and no indications of a seal having ever been soldered on to it.”

   The writing covers the upper three-fourth of the surface, which measures about 32∙5 cms. broad by 12∙5 cms. high, and consists of fourteen lines, the last of which extending slightly more than half of the others. Below it and on the proper left side of the plate is
engraved the sign manual śrī Dhaṁga, in characters which are almost of the double size of the others and followed by two vertical strokes,
but it does not show the representation of the royal emblem. On the right
_________________________

^[1] Better read .
^[2] Better read .
^[3] Read dattiṁ, in the sense of ‘a gift”. See C. I. I., Vol. IV, p. 617, n. What appears as an anusvāra over da is a fault of the stone.
^[4] Read Vaiśākha.
^[5] Op. cit., p. 201.
^[6] From personal correspondence with both these institutes I can only conclude that this plate, along with some others which are recorded
    to have been handed over to the Indian Museum by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, is not now forthcoming.