South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

No. 45─TERASINGHA PLATES OF TUSHTIKARA

(1 Plate)

D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND

The village of Terāsiṅghā (sometimes also called Tersinga) lies on the southern bank of the river Tel in the Madanpur-Rampur Zamindary of the old Kalahandi State, the present Kalahand District of Orissa. The set of copper plates, which forms the subject of the present article, was discovered near the bank of the Tel by some cowherd boys of Terāsiṅghā in the latter half of the year 1947. The plates are now in the possession of the Maharaja of Kalahandi.

Mr. Satyanārāyaṅa Rājaguru secured the plates for examination in October 1947 and published his reading and interpretation of the inscription in the Journal of the Kalinga Historical Research Society, Vol. II, Nos. 2-3, 1947, pp. 107 ff, and Plates. Unfortunately Mr. Rājaguru’s treatment of the epigraph is not quite satisfactory. In April 1948, the office of the Government Epigraphist for India received a set of impressions of the plates from Mr. K. N. Mahāpātra of Kalahandi and, in the month of December of the same year, secured the original plates for examination through the Superintendent, Department of Archaeology, Eastern Circle, Calcutta. Besides the excellent impressions of the plates then prepared and now preserved in the office of the Government Epigraphist for India, I had, in 1952, an opportunity of examining also the original record through the kindness of the Maharaja of Kalahandi.

This is a set of three small and thin plates each measuring 5.9 inches by 1.6 inches. The plates are strung together on a rather thin ring to which, however, the seal is not soldered in the usual fashion. The purpose of the seal has been served by flattening a portion of the ring into a small rectangle which bears the legend śrī-Tushṭikāraḥ. The three plates together weigh 12½ tolas while the weight of the ring is only 1½ tolas.

The characters belong to the Kaliṅga variety of the Southern Alphabet and the epigraph may be assigned, on palaeographic grounds, to the first half of the sixth century A. D. The alphabet resembles closely that of the early charters of the Gaṅga kings of Kaliṅganagara and Dantapura such, e.g. as the Jirjingi plates^[1] of king Indravarman I, dated in the Gaṅga year 39 falling in 535-37 A. D. An interesting feature of the record is that the main document (fifteen lines) is engraved on the inner side of the first plate, both sides of the second plate and the inner side of the third plate, while there are some slightly later additions on the outer sides of the first and third plates as well as at the end of the original charter of the inner side of the last plate. The characters of the additional writing on the third plate closely resemble those of the original document ; but the lines on the outer side of the first plate, which represent a complete endorsement in four lines are written in box-headed characters which exhibit utter carelessness on the part of the scribe and engraver. The language of the original document as well as of the additional matter is Sanskrit.; but while the number of mistakes in the former is not many, the latter is full of errors. In point of orthography, the original charter resembles other records of the Eastern Deccan belonging to the sixth and seventh centuries. The inscription bears no date.

The main charter was issued from Tarabhramaraka by Mahārāja Tushṭikāra, who was a devotee of Stambhēśvarī. It records the king’s order addressed to the agriculturist householders of Prastara-vāṭaka relating to the grant of the said vāṭaka (literally, ‘ an enclosure ’, ‘ a garden ’ or ‘ a plantation ’, but in the present case possibly ‘ a small hamlet ’) as a permanent agrahāra in favour of a Brāhmaṇa of the Kāśyapa gōtra, named Ārya-Drōṇaśarman. The inhabitants of

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^[1] JAHRS, Vol. III, p. 51 and Plates ; Vol. VII, 229. The characters of the record under study appear to be earlier than those of the Urlam plates of Hastivarman, dated Gaṅga year 80 (576-78 A.D). See above, Vol. XVII, pp. 330 ff. and Plates.