|
The Indian Analyst
|
|
South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA No. 12.─ KAMAULI COPPER-PLATE OF THE SINGARA VATSARAJA ;
[VIKRAMA-]SAMVAT 1191. This is one of the twenty-five copper-plate inscriptions (the only one of which no account has yet been published) which are said to have been found in October 1892 at the village of Kamauli near Benares, and which are now deposited in the Provincial Museum at Lucknow.[1] I edit it from excellent impressions, kindly supplied by Dr. A. Führer. The inscription is on a single plate, which is engraved on one face only, and measures about 1′ 4″ broad by 1′ ¼″ high. In the upper part the plate has a ring-hole, about 11/16″ in diameter ; and it contains 25 lines of writing which is in an excellent state of preservation. The size of the letters is about 5/16″. The characters are Nâgarî, and the language is Sanskṛit. As regards orthography, it will suffice to state that the writer (or engraver) has employed ten times a sign which may have been meant by him to be the sign for b, but which in some places looks like the sign for y and in others like that for p, and is used seven times to denote v and three times to denote b ; and that in general, especially towards the end, he has done his work in so slovenly a manner that the text abounds in errors of all kinds. The inscription is composed on the model of the inscriptions of Gôvindachandra, published above, p. 99 ff., and the formal (prose) part of it, from line 14 to line 21, and the passage referring to Gôvindachandra in lines 5-8, are nearly identical with the corresponding parts of Gôvindachandra’s own grants. From those grants the author has taken also three verses (vv. 1, 3 and 4) in the introductory part of the inscription.[2] To these he has added six verses of his own (vv. 2 and 5-9), one of which (v. 9) cannot be properly construed, while nearly all of them contain offences against the rules of grammar.
The inscription, opening with verse 1 of Gôvindachandra’s inscriptions, which invokes the blessing of the goddess Śrî (or Lakshmî), in verses 2-4 gives the well-known genealogy of Gôvindachandra of Kanauj, and in lines 5-8 refers itself to the reign of that king, in terms with which we are familiar from his own grants. The author then, in verses 5-9, gives the genealogy of the donor, who must be understood to have been a subordinate or feudatory chief of Gôvindachandra. A certain Kamalapâla, who had come from Śṛiṅgarôṭa, by his intelligence and bravery acquired for himself a râja-paṭṭî,[3] i.e. ‘ a royal fillet or tiara,’ (probably bestowed on him by one of Gôvindachandra’s predecessors). His son was Sûlhaṇa or Alhaṇa (?). He had a son named Kumâra, ‘ a jewel at the head of the illustrious Siṅgara family, always an object of reverence for princes,’ who apparently was alive when the inscription was composed. And his son was Lôhaḍadêva, also called Vatsarâja, a warrior chief who humbled enemies and gave delight to friends and relatives. In lines 14-21, this Mahârâjaputra (or Mahârâja’s son) Vatsarâjadêva, of the Siṅgara family and the Śâṇḍilya gôtra, records that, at the Kanyâ-saṁkrânti, on Tuesday, the 8th tithi of the bright half of Bhâdrapada of the year 1191 (given both in words and in decimal figures), after bathing in the Ganges at the Avimukta kshêtra of Benares, he granted the village of Âmbavara in the Râpaḍi (or Râvaḍi) district to the Ṭhakkura Dalhûśarman, a son of Brahman and son’s son of Vâja, of the Gâḍa family, a
__________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
