South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

No. 37─BHANJA GRANT FROM KHICHING

(1 Plate)

D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND

On December 1, 1941, a copper-plate grant was dug up from the compound of the Thākurāṇī temple at Khiching (ancient Khijjiṅga) which is an important locality in the old Mayurbhanj State in Orissa. Since then the plate was lying at the Museum at Baripada, headquarters of the State. About the end of December 1948, I met Mr. Paramananda Acharya, then State Archaeologist of Mayurbhanj, at Delhi, where we had assembled for the eleventh session of the Indian History Congress, and received from him information about the discovery. Mr. Acharya then kindly agreed to send the plate to me for examination and publication. The plate reached me sometime afterwards at the office of the Government Epigraphist for India, Ootacamund, where it was properly cleaned and several sets of its impressions and photographs were prepared. My sincere thanks are due to Mr. Acharya for his kindness in allowing me to publish the inscription.

This is a single copper plate measuring about 8½″ by 7″. On a projection at its top centre, is affixed a circular seal which is about is about 24/5″ in diameter. At the lower end of this seal, which is designed in the form of an expanded lotus, is carved, on a counter-sunk surface, the emblem of a lotus on stalk, above which there is a couchant bull facing proper right and flanked by a few indistinct devices. Above the bull is the legend in two lines : (1) Śrī-Māhadā- (2) bhañjadēvasya, ‘ of Māhadābhañjadēva.’ It will be seen from our discussion on the inscription below that the name of the Bhañja king who issued the charter, as it is found in the body of the epigraph, does not quite tally with the name as given in the legend on the seal. It may also be pointed out that, although the seal resembles that attached to other records of the Ādi-Bhañja royal family of Khijjiṅgakōṭṭa (Khiching), in the present case the legend is found not below but above the couchant bull. The design of the seal of the Ādi-Bhañja kings-as well as their custom of using single copper plates for their charters was possibly borrowed from the Bhauma-Karas to whom they may have originally owed allegiance. The plate is written on both sides, the obverse bearing seventeen lines of writing and the reverse sixteen lines. The letters are fairly deeply incised ; but they have suffered here and there owing to corrosion. The plate weighs 102 tolas.

The characters employed in the inscription belong to the Gauḍīya alphabet and may be palaeographically assigned to a date not much earlier than the eleventh century A.D. The style of writing is cursive and even careless. As is expected in a record of the age and region concerned, b has always been indicated by the sign for v. But sometimes v and ch have the same form ; cf. kulaṭ=ēva (line 27), khichiṅga, charaṇº (line 14), chā (line 28). In the case of many other letters also, two or more forms have very often been employed. In the passage bhava-bhaya-bhidurō (line 2), the letter bh has three different forms. The letter t has been written in both the Dēvanāgarī and the Bengali fashion ; cf. nṛipatii (line 6) and prathitaḥ, tasy=āº (line 10). D is sometimes undistinguishable from ḍ and has in some cases a form resembling that of bh. For the various form of this letter, see dakshō (line 5), prativa(ba)ddha (line 16), pradattōº (line 20), dattā (line 21), ºgar-āda(di)bhiº, yadā (line 22), ºd=aphala (line 23), para-dattā (line 25), ºm=udāº (line 32), etc. P and y have several forms and are often undistinguishable from each other ; cf. tapōº (line 4), rūpaḥ, putra (line 8), nṛipati (line 9), punya(ṇya) (line 19), ºr=yasya yasya (line 22), para-dattā (line 25), vi(sa)padi (line 29), etc. R has various forms ; cf. ºbhidurō (line 2), śūraḥ (line 11), rājā (line 12), para-dattā (line 25), vī(vi)nasva(śva)ra (line 28), etc. Often n is written exactly like r ; cf., nidhana (line 5), nṛipati, ripu-vana-da(dā)vānala (line 6); but, in many cases, it has its usual form ; cf. ºr=vvinītō (line 7). For various forms of the medial u and ū signs, see bhū(bhu) (line 1), ku (lines 13 and 27), mu (lines 20 and 31), hu (line 21 and 27), nu (line 24), vu(bu) (line 32), etc. For peculiar forms of some other aksharas, cf. khya (line 8), ksha,