North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE CHANDELLAS OF JEJAKABHUKTI

No. 119 ; PLATE CX
BHARAT KALĀ BHAVAN PLATE-INSCRIPTION OF MADANAVARMA
[ Vikrama ] Year 1192

THIS inscription is incised on a set of two copper-plates, preserved in the Bhārat Kalā Bhavan, which is now attached to the Hindu University, Vārāṇasī. They are said to have been purchased some twenty years ago, from a dealer of the name of Ṭhākur Dās Jain, a resident of Ṭīkamgaḍh, the chief town of a district of the same name in Madhya Pradesh. No information is available as to the original findspot of the plates or about the circumstances in which they were obtained. Rai Kṛishṇadāsjī, the founder-Curator of the Kalā Bhavan, took immediate steps to bring to light the inscription by lending its pencil-rubbings to Dr. D. C. Sircar who was then the Government Epigraphist for India, in 1955. Dr. Sircar edited the record in the Epigraphia Indica. Vol. XXXII (1958-59), pp. 119 ff., with his transcript thereof in Roman characters, accompanied by facsimiles (between pp. 122-23).^[10] The inscription is edited here from a set inked impressions kindly supplied to me at my request by Rai Kṛishṇa Dāsjī who
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^[1] This letter appears as hā but it is ya.
^[2] The daṇḍa, which appears as a mātrā, is redundant, as others in this line.
^[3] The reading of the second akshara in the name is doubtful.
^[4] The akshara in the brackets may also be read as .
^[5] The vowel-mark is faintly visible above.
^[6] The letter in the brackets is damaged and is read by the sense. This expression also shows the con- fusion between the formation of t and n.
^[7] Both these letters too are mis-formed and look like ḍāsāṁ. Kielhorn translates this expression as “with the income from without and within”, which can better be explained as ‘with external and internal taxes’.
^[8] Kielhorn read ─ . But in that case the very name of the writer is missing. The inscription is engraved in a slipshod manner; and in the
light of the next grant of which the writer was the same, we have to read ─…..
^[9] The sandhi is not made here. Kielhorn read ─, but the first akshara is clearly ū as also shown by the following inscription.
^[10] Sircar also noticed this grant, along with the other two which are now in the Bhārat Kalā Bhavan (our Nos. 134 and 138). in the
I. H. Q., Vol. XXXIV (1958), pp. 87 ff.