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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA No. 42─JANAGALPADU PLATES OF SATRUBHANJADEVA D. C. Sircar, Ootacamund In 1946 Mr. Satyanārāyaṇa Rājaguru published a copper-plate inscription of king Śatrubhañja belonging to a branch of the celebrated Bhañja royal family of ancient Orissa.[1] Ten years earlier the inscription was published by the same scholar in the Utkala Sāhitya[2], an Oriya periodical of Cuttack. As regards the findspot and discovery of the plates, Mr. Rājaguru observes thus in his paper published in 1946 : “ About ten years back, a cultivator, while digging the earth, found these plates buried in a field near Jaṅgalapāḍu, a village situated at a distance of ten miles to the north-east of Parlakimedi in the Ganjam District. I went to the village soon after I got information of this discovery, and carefully examined the charter....... But, as the owner of the plates did not like to part with the charter, I had no other choice except taking their impressions at the spot .... A few months after this, I was told that the charter was handed over to a wanderer sannyāsī whose whereabouts are not known up till now, and consequently the plates are now missing.”[3] Mr. Rājaguru thinks that the most important thing in the record is its date which has been read by him as Samvat 1012 Kārttika-śudi 10 1 (i.e. 11). He refers the year 1012 to the Śaka era and suggests that the charter belongs to 1090 A.D. Apparently, however, Mr. Rājaguru did not notice that a paper on the same inscription by the late Mr. R. D. Banerji had been published as early as 1932.[4] The charter is described by Banerji as ‘ the Tekkali Plates ’. He further observes, “ I came to learn of the existence of this important inscription from Mr. Paramananda Acharya, B. Sc., Senior Archaeological Scholar of the Mayurbhanj State in May or June, 1929. Subsequently, at my request, Mr. Acharya supplied me with the pencil rubbings from which the inscription is edited below. I have not been able to elicit the name of the owner of these plates and their present locality from Mr. Acharya.”[5] The plates were thus discovered at least seven years earlier than the time suggested by Mr. Rājaguru, although their association with Tekkali, also in the Ganjam District, instead of Jaṅgalpāḍu near Parlakimedi, as indicated by Banerji may be wrong. Like Mr. Rājaguru, Banerji also spoke of the importance of the date of the inscription, which, however, he read as Samvat 8 100 Kārttika-śudi 8. He took the year of the date to be 800 which he referred to the Vikrama era. Thus, according to Banerji, the inscription under discussion belongs to 732 A.D. Dr. R. C. Majumdar,[6] who had occasion to consult Banerji’s paper, thinks that the reading of the date is doubtful but says that ‘ on palæographic considerations also this plate may be referred to the eighth century A.D.’
I had recently an occasion to examine the inscription from its facsimile published along with the papers of Banerji and Rājaguru and found that, apart from the many misprint in the published transcripts of the record, numerous passages of the inscription, including the one containing its date, have been wrongly read. The reading of the last line of the record is quite clearly Samvat 10 4 Kārttika-śudi 10 1 (i.e. Saṁvat 14 Karttika-śudi 11). The symbol for 10 which is practically the same as quoted by Ojha from a Vākāṭaka record in his Palaeography of India (in Hindi), Plate LXXIIIa, was wrongly read by Banerji as 8, although Rājaguru read it correctly. The second symbol in the year, which also occurs in other early Orissan records and ___________________________________________
[1] Journal of the Kalinga Historical Research Society, Vol. I, No. 2, September, 1946, pp. 181 ff. and Plates.
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