South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

resemblance between the forms of the two letters.^[1] The Parbatiyā plates under discussion read the name of the capital city of the second line of Prāgjyōtisha kings (i. e., the house of Sālastambha) unmistakably as Haḍapēśvara which was apparently also the reading of the lost plates. This seems to suggest that the readings intended in the records of Harjaravarman and Balavarman were Haṭappēśvara and Haḍappēśvara respectively.

The inscription mentions a number of geographical names including those of a river and a hill. The adoration to the river-god Lōhitya-sindhu (cf. Lōhitya-bhaṭṭāraka also in the Tezpur plates), i.e., the Brahmaputra, is very interesting. The same river is also adored as Lauhitya-vāridhi, Lauhitya-sindhu and Lauhitya ity=adhipatiḥ saritām in the records respectively of Balavarman who was the grandson of Vanamālavarman, of Ratnapāla who was the son of Brahmapāla founder of the Pāla dynasty (the third line of Prāgjyōtisha kings), and of Indrapāla who was the grandson of Ratnapāla.^[2] The kings apparently held the river-god in special veneration. But more interesting is the reference to the Lauhitya or Brahmaputra as a ‘sea’. This seems to be associated with the tradition about the existence, in early times, of the Eastern Ocean (i. e., the Bay of Bengal) near Dēvīkōṭṭa which is modern Bangarh in the Dinajpur District in the northern part of Bengal, and with the presence in the central region of Bengal of large bils or lakes like the Chalan.^[3] Wide areas in the Mymensing District of Bengal (now in East Pakistan), through which the Brahmaputra at present passes, are spoken of as the ‘sea’ even today. It is a low-lying country which for six or more months of the year is under water ; in that area, communication by boats of maundage varying with the stream and season is always possible. The coast line of this ‘sea’ may be taken to be passing through Bhairab-bāzār, Bājitpur, Niklī, Ḍōmpārā and Tarāil and then towards the north-east.

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To the west of this line, the country is a bed of dead and dying rivers. Equally interesting is the mention of the Kāmakūṭa hill, on which the god Kāmēśvara and the goddess Mahāgaurī are said to have been installed. The same deities are also mentioned in the Guākuchi plates^[4] of king Indrapāla of the Pāla dynasty or the third line of Prāgjyōtisha kings. The land granted by this charter is described as Uttara-kūlē Mandi-vishay-āntaḥpāti-Paṇḍarī-bhūmitō=’pakṛishṭa-dhānya-dvisahasr-ōtpattika-bhūmi, i.e., the land of an inferior quality yielding 2,000 [drōṇas] of paddy out of the area called Paṇḍarī (modern Pāṇḍuri Mauza in which the Raṅgiyā station on the old Assam Railway is situated) in the Mandi district pertaining to Uttara-kūla. This Uttara-kūla. (literally ‘the north bank’) was apparently a division of the kingdom of Prāgjyōtisha lying on the north bank of the Brahmaputra. In the description of the boundaries of the above land, the Guākuchi inscription mentions several times Mahāgaurī-Kāmēśvarayōḥ satka(or dēva-satka)-śāsana-Paṇḍarībhūmi, i. e., the land called Paṇḍarī which was a gift land belonging to the deities Mahāgaurī and Kāmēśvara. The names of the hill Kāmakūṭa and the god Kāmēśvara would suggest that the goddess Mahāgaurī was no other than Kāmēśvarī otherwise called Kāmā or Kāmākhyā (literally ‘the goddess with the name Kāmā’) whose temple stands near Gauhati^[5] in Assam. According to the Kālikā

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^[1] Cf. Kāmarūpa-śāsan-āvalī, p. 59, note 1.
^[2] Ibid., pp. 73, 92, 117.
^[3] Cf. pūrvē kila Dēvīkōṭṭa-samīpē paśchimē (sic. pūrvē) Pūrvōdadhir=āsīt in Bṛihaspati-Rāyamukuṭa’s Padachandrikā (Select Inscriptions, Vol. I, p. 501). For references to the sea bordering on the country of Prāgjyōtisha or Kāmarūpa, see Sachau, Alberuni’s India, I, p. 201 ; Rāmāyaṇa (Vaṅgavāsī ed.), Kishkindhā-kāṇḍa, chapter 42, verse 30, etc.
^[4] Kāmarūpa-śāsan-āvalī, p. 136-37.
^[5] Cf. The Śākta Pīṭhas, pp. 12-13, 15.