South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE VATSAGULMA BRANCH

No. 23 : PLATE XXIII
BASIM PLATES OF VINDHYASAKTI II

...THESE plates were discovered by Pandit Vāsudev Śāstrī Dhanāgarē at Bāsim, the headquarters of the Bāsim tahsil of the Akōlā District in Vidarbha. There were first publicshed with facsimiles by Dr. Y.K. Deshpande and D.B. Mahajan in the Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Third Session, pp. 459 f. They were re-edited with fresh facsimiles by Mr. D.B. Mahajan and myself in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXVI, pp. 137 f. They are edited here from the same facsimiles. The plates are in the possession of Mr. Dhanāgarē at Basim.

...The copper-plates are four in number, each measuring 6.1” broad and 3.4” high. The first and fourth plates are inscribed on one side only, and the other two on both the sides. Their ends are neither fashioned thicker nor raised into rims; still the inscription is in a good state of preservation. About 1.2” from the middle of the proper right edge of each plate, there is a round hole, .25” in diameter for the ring which holds the plates together. The ring, however, has no seal. The total weight of the plates together with the ring is 47^1/2 tōlās. The inscription contains thirty lines of writing, which are equally divided on the six inscribed sides of the four plates.

... The characters are of the box-headed variety of the southern alphabets, resembling those of the grants of Pravarasēna II. The only peculiarities that need be noticed here are as follows :− The medial au is bipartite as in –pautrasya, line 3; kh is some cases without a loop, cf. rakkhadha, line 25; t and n are not distinguished in many places, both being denoted by the same form ; see –vvachanāt, line 5, hemanta, line 28 and anumaṇṇati, line 26; the lingual ṇ has an identical form whether it is used as a subscript or a superscript letter, as in a-hiraṇṇa- dhāṇṇa, line 20. Numerical symbols for 30, 7 and 4 occur in lines 28 and 29 of the text, those for 1 to 4 on the first inscribed side of the respective plates. Of these the symbol for 4 in line 29 is noteworthy; for it consists of the sign for ka with an additional curve, not at the top as usual, but at the right side of its horizontal bar. In the margin of the same plate, the symbol is exactly like ka. A final consonant is indicated by its short form without a box at the head; see ¬-=vvachanāt, line 5. Finally, a crescent-like curve is used here and there as a mark of punctuation, which is redundant in most cases. The language of the inscription is partly Sanskrit and partly Prakrit. The genealogical portion of the grant in lines 1-5 is in Sanskrit, the formal portion which follows is in Prakrit, but like the Hirahaḍgalli plates, the present inscription closes with a benedictory sentence in Sanskrit. It is note worthy that as in early Prakrit inscriptions of the Pallavas and Bṛihatphalāyanas, there are no benedictive or imprecatory verses at the end. The Sanskrit portion calls for no special notice except that the gōtra of the Vākāṭakas which is usually given as Vishṇuvṛiddha appears here in the form Vṛishṇīvṛiddha. The former is evidently the correct form; for it is the only form of the gōtra given by the standard works on the gotras and pravaras. The Prakrit portion of the inscription deserves careful study; for this is one of the few copper-plate grants from south India which contain a detailed portion in Prakrit. Even in this portion, however, the language is influenced by Sanskrit; see, e.g. the Sanskrit expressions svasti-śānti- vāchanē, lines 8-9; sa-mañcha-mahākarṇa, line 24 etc., which are inserted in the midst of