South Indian Inscriptions

INCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF TRIPURI

They are two copper-plates, each measuring 1’2“ broad and 9½“ high. The first plate weight 226½ tolas and the second 215V tolas. Their ends are raised into rims for the pro tection of the writing. The first plate is inscribed on the inner side only, and the second on both the sides. In the middle of the top of each plate there is hole, .8“ in diameter, for the ring which must have originally held the plates together ; but neither the ring nor the seal, which must have been attached to it, was apparently discovered,^¹

The record consists of 43 lines, of which twenty are inscribed on the inner side of each plate and the remaining three on the outer side of the second. The inscription seems to have been completed at first in the last line on the inner side of the second plate; for the words mańgalam mahāśrih, which usually indicate the completion of a record, occur at the end of that line. It seems, therefore, plausible, as conjectured by R. B. Hiralal, that the engraver whose name was at first inadvertently omitted, induced the Head of the Depart ment of Religion to compose one more verse about himself to serve as an excuse for en graving the second side of the second plate, before he could insert his own name.

The characters are Nāgarī. They are beautifully formed and carefully incised. The size of the letters varies from- 3“ to .4“. The akshara da which was imitted in 1.25 has been written at the top of the first plate with the figure 2 following it, and the place of omission os shown with an inverted kākapada above the line.^² As regards indidual letters we may note that the initial I appears in its old form, see, e.g., iva, 1.6; ń is still without its dot, see-Trikalińga-, I.21; while th, dh and jn approximate to their modern Nagari forms see; e.g., yatha, 1. 31- Madhukah, 1. 28, samjanapayamti, 1.25; b is indicated by is proper sign in a few cases where it appears as the superscript letter of a ligature, see, e.g., = abja-, I.I. The language is Sanskrit. The eulogistic part of the grant which extends to 1.19 is in verse ; it is followed by the formal part in prose in ll. 19-21 Then come the beaedic tive and imprecatory verses, of which as many as eleven are included herein II. 31-39 Two more verses, one recording the name of the writer and the other in praise of the Head of the Religious Department, are next added. The record finally ends with the name of the engraver in prose. Verse I-12 of the present grant which carry the genealogy of the donor from Brahman to Yaśahkarņa. The draft of the present grant is, however, shorter and Jabalpur plates of yasakharna The Draft of the present inscription are repeated than the corresponding portion of the aforementioned grants of Yaśahkarņa by three ver ses³.Again, all the verses of the eulogistic part of the present inscription are repeated in the Kumbhī copper-plate inscription of Vijayasimhadēva, which contains seven more verses4 in its corresponding portion. As regards orthography, we find that the sign of is used to denote b except in ligatures see, e.lf., abja-, II. 1 and 2 ; -abdhi-, II.2 and 9 etc.; the palatal and dental sebilants are generally used each in its proper place, but occasional de viations from this are also noticed, see, e.g., - rasnā for – raśanā in 1.9 and śravamtyāh for sravantyāh, 1.12; finally, y is used for j in friha- yāmātaram =,1.2.

The plates were issued by the king Jayasimha of the Later Kalachuri Dyanasty of Tripurī. He is described here exactly like his elder brother Narasimha in the LOāl-pahād rock inscription. The Object of the present inscription is to record the grant of the village Agarā near Akharauda, which the king made at Tripuri after bacthing in the
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¹ The Rai brothers of Katni kindly showed me a seal of Jayasimhadeva which was previously in the collection of Hiralal (plate LII). But there was no indication of its having been soldered to or otherwise connected with any ring.