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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS TEXT1 1 . . . . śr[ī]-Kumāraguptasya v[i]ja[ya]-r[ā]jya-sa[ṁ]vva[t]2 100 20 53 [Ā]śvayuja-
māsē di 9 | asy[āṁ] divasa-pū[rv]v[ā]y[āṁ] Māthura[s]ya TRANSLATION (Line 1-3) In the year 125 of the victorious reign of the illustrious Kumāragupta, on the 9th day of the month of Āśvayuja, when this was the detailed order of the date, (this is the) gift of [Ku]māradāsabhaṭṭa, a native of Mathurā. Whatever religious merit (there is) in this (act), let it be (for the acquisition of) supreme (knowledge) by (his) parents and by all sentient beings. No. 24 : PLATE XXIV
DĀMŌDARPUR COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF KUMĀRAGUPTA I : This inscription was discovered in the village of Dāmōdarpur, about eight miles west of the Police Station Phulbāri in West Dinajpur District, West Bengal, in the same circumstances as No. 22 above. It also is now deposited in the Museum of the Varendra Research Society, Rajshahi, now Bangladesh. And it was edited by Radhagovinda Basak in the Ep. Ind., Vol. XV, pp. 132 ff. and Plate ii a and ii b. The date, however, had been wrongly read by him and was corrected by K. N. Dikshit in the Ep. Ind., Vol. XVII, p. 193. The plate is one in number but is inscribed on both sides, the first containing eight and
the second five lines of writing as in No. 22 above. It measures 6"x3-5/8". The edges thereof
have not been raised into rims for the protection of the writing. The plate is thicker than
that described in No. 22 above, but the letters are less deeply incised. The plate has been
generally damaged through corrosion and considerably in a portion of the proper left side,
especially a few letters in lines 5-10. Though the work of decipherment has thus become a
very difficult task, the wellnigh obliterated letters can be restored with some confidence with
the help of the plate transcribed in No. 22 above and other sister plates. The weight of the
plate, according to Basak, is 15-11/16 tolas. The characters belong to the eastern variety of
the Gupta alphabet precisely as remarked about the previous plate (No. 22 above). The other
palaeographical points that deserve notice are also the same as in the other plate, namely,
(1) the occurrence of the initial vowel a as in adhishṭhāna, line 4, arhatha, line 6, and api, line
11; (2) the initial ē as in ētad-, line 7, and ētasmād=, line 8, and (3) the peculiar sign for the
subscript ā by a hook attached to the lower right of the letter dh, as in dhāraṇayā, line 8, and
=vvasudhā, line 12. The characters also include, in line 1, forms of the numerical symbols
3, 8, 10, 20 and 100. The language is Sanskrit; and the inscription is in prose throughout,
1 From impressions.
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