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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
B. Vajraayōginī Plate of Sāmalavarman This is only a quarter of a whole plate. It was discovered in the village of Vajrayōginī, P. S. Munsiganj, District Dacca. Vajrayōginī, in old days, must have been a part of the city of Vikramapura. It is unusually big in area, being a conglomeration of 28 hamlets, each with a separate name. Vajrayōginī contains a number of old temple sites, full of mouldering bricks. By the side of three large tanks in the village, there is a raised homestead site, still known as Nāstika-paṇḍiter bhiṭā, i.e. the atheist Pandit’s homestead, which is fondly believed to have been the site of the homestead of the famous Buddhist scholar Dīpaṅkara. A large number of Buddhist and Brahmanical images including the famous silver image of Vishṇu, now in the Indian Museum[1], were discovered in different parts of the village. An image of Tārā of the late Gupta or early Pāla period[2] and another inscribed image of the same deity of a later date[3] discovered in this village are now in the Dacca Museum. Sōmpāra is hamlet of Vajrayōginī. There is an old tank in the hamlet from which several Buddhist images were recovered. The inscribed image of Tārā referred to above was one of them. On the southern side of the tank, there are mouldering ruins of an old temple, fragments of the basement walls of which are still standing. East of the ruins is a small tank by the side of the District Board road. This tank was reclaimed some years ago and the earth raised was thrown round the tank. The fragment of copper-plate under study was discovered by some boys on the north bank of this tank, about six inches below the surface of the soil. Priyanāth Banerji, a teacher of the local High School, obtained the fragment from the boys and presented it to the Dacca Museum.
The fragment is thick fairly heavy. It measures 5⅜ by 4⅜ inches. Therefore, the copper-plate, when entire, must have measured approximately 11½ by 9 inches. Both the obverse and the reverse of the fragment contain each 15 lines of writing. The characters are Proto-Bengali of the 11th-12th century and closely resemble those of the Belāva plate of Bhōjavarman. As noted above, r shows distinct development from its from found in the plate of Śrīchandra and that of Harivarman edited above. The letters, which are _____________________________________________
[1] See my Iconography of Buddhist and Brahmanical Sculptures in the Dacca Museum, p. 84, Pl. XXIX.
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