North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

CHARKHĀRĪ COPPER PLATE INSCRIPTION OF THE OF HAMMĪRAVARMAN

No. 151 ; PLATE CXXXVIII

CHARKHĀRĪ COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF HAMMĪRAVARMAN

[Vikrama] Year 1346

THIS is one of the four inscriptions edited for the first time by Rai Bahadur Hiralal in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XX (1929-30), pp. 125 ff. The plates of all these records are known to have been found in the possession of the Ruling Chief of Charkhārī, an old State in Bundelkhand, which has later on integrated with the modern Uttar Pradesh and is now the chief town of a parganā in the Hamīrpur District in it. The provenance of the plates is unknown; but as we further learn, they were all received, through the Director-General of Archaeology in India, by Hirananda Sastrī, who was then the Government Epigraphist and who supplied their impressions to Hiralal for editing the inscriptions. But excepting the present one, none of the records edited by him is accompanied by a facsimile. The inscription on the present plate is edited here from an impression which was subsequently prepared and which I owe to the kindness of the Chief Epigraphist.⁷

The inscription is incised on one side only, of a single copper-plate, measuring 29 cms, broad and 21.5 cms, high. All round the plate there is a flat rim, about 1.2 cm. broad, fastened on very tightly by twenty rivets (five on each side).⁸ The weight of the plate is recorded to be 48 tolas, i.e., 559.86 grams. From the impression the plate does not appear to be well preserved. Its surface has been corroded here and there, resulting in the loss or damage of a few aksharas making their forms indistinct. The inscription consists of twenty lines of writing, the last of which is only 6 cms. long. In the middle of the first four is engraved the figure of the
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¹ The mātrā of the letter is perhaps struck off on the original.
² The prefix ā in ābhāra is redundant.
³ Either of these words would have denoted the intended sense and one of them is superfluous.
⁴ The reading of the bracketed akshara is doubtful. The impression shows that the first two of these aksharas may have been altered to kārya in the original. But Kāryatām is equally wrong as krīyatām.
⁶ Here the inscription ends abruptly and the next line which is in smaller letters reads
⁷ It is his No. A-48 of 1956-57. The impression from which Hiralal edited the inscription must evidently have been taken some time before 1929-30 when his article appears in the Vol. of Ep. Ind, for that year.
⁸ The rivets appear to be thick as can be judged from their marks on the impression, and the one in the middle of the top of the plate appears to have been lost probably making Hiralal conjecture the vacant place for a ring-hole.