South Indian Inscriptions

INCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF TRIPURI

(contents of the plates were first noticed by Sir A. Cunningham in his Archœological Survey of India Reports, Vol. IX, pp. 87 ff., but his account, based as it was on the aforementioned transcript, was very incorrect.¹ The first plate was then edited, with a translation but without a lithograph, by Dr. Kielhorn from rubbings and impressions supplied to him. It seems that the plate was not properly cleaned before its impressions and rubbings were taken for Dr. Kielhorn, who could not, in consequence, read with certainty several aksharas of it. At my request Mr. M.A.Suboor of the Nagpur Museum has kindly cleaned the plate which now yields fairly good impressions. The inscription is edited here from the original plate and its ink impressions kindly taken for me by Mr. Natarajan, Superintendent of the Government Press, Nagpur.

The plate is substantial, weighing 4 seers and 31½ tolas. It is the first plate of its set and is inscribed on one side only. It measures I' 6½″ in breadth and I' ½″ in height and is about. 2″ in thickness. Its rims are raised for the protection of the writing. At the bottom of the inscribed side, there is a hole, .7″ in diameter; for the ring which must have held the plates together, but both the ring and the seal which must have been soldered to it are lost. The plate is in a state of good preservation, only two or three letters being slightly damaged by rust.

The characters are Nāgarī and closely resemble those of the Khairhā plates, the writer being probably the same as shown below. The only peculiarities that call for notice are that the initial i is represented by the later sign throughout, see e.g., iva, 1.5, Indu-, 1.7 etc.; the left limb of kh is devoid of a tail in some plates see e.g., -khēlat–, 1. II and khalu, 1.15, but contrast that in khadga-, 1. 10; gh also appears in two forms, see samghasamghatta in 1.7 and –parigha- in 1.8. The sign of avagraha is used in 11. 10 and 14.

The language is Sanskrit and with the exception of ōm namō Vrahmanē in the beginning and a few initial words of the formal part at the end, the whole of the extant portion is metrically composed. All the verses, which number twenty-four, occur in the Khairhā plates. The orthography shows the same peculiarities as in those plates. Besides, j is used for y once only in –trijāmā-, 1.15.

As stated before, the inscription is fragmentary. It contains the entire eulogistic portion which is identical with that of the Khairhā grant, but it breaks off just after the formal portion begins. As the genealogy in the eulogistic portion stops with Yaśahkarna, it is plain that the grant was made by him. From the Nagpur. Museum transcript of the second plate, which, though inaccurate in some places, may be used with caution in the absence of the original plate, it seems that the object of the inscription was to record the grant, by Yaśahkarna, of the village Karañjā situated on the bank of the Narmadā in the Jāulī pattalā² on the occasion of the Uttarāyanasankrānti on Monday, the tenth tithi of the dark fortnight of Māgha in the year 529. The donee was the Brāhmana Hariśarman, the son of Bhatta Śrī-Nāgō and grandson of Bhatta Śrī-Bhavanāma(ga ?) of the Vājasanēya śākhā with the three pravaras Kāśyapa, Avatsāra and Naidhruva. The scribe was probably the illustrious Vāchchhūka, who wrote³ the Khairhā plates.
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¹See the mistakes pointed out by Kielhorn, Ep. Ind., Vol. II, p. I. n. 2.
² The transcript reads Jāuli-pattana-pātim-Karamjā-grāmah and so Hiralal has stated that the plates record a grant of a village named Pātinkar in the Jāulipattan; (see his Inscriptions etc., p. 25), but the correct reading is probably Jāulī-pattal-āntahpāti-Karamjāgrāmah. For pattalā meaning a territorial sub-division, see 1. 28 of the Khairhā plates.
³The transcript has Dharmalēkhi-śrī-Vākyakala-likhitam=iti which is obviously a mistake for Dharma- lēkhi-śrī-Vāchchhūkēna likhitam=iti. See line 44 of the Khairhā plates (above, No. 56).