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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA The friendship between Harshavardhana and Bhāskaravarman contracted in 606 A.D. with a view to humbling the power of king Śasāṅka of Gauḍa ultimately led to their joint victory over Gauḍa sometime after the death of Śaśāṅka who was ruling as late as 619 A.D. over wide regions of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Nidhanpur charter of Bhāskaravarman was issued from his camp at Karṇasuvarṇa, the capital of the Gauḍa kingdom, in the present Murshidabad District of West Bengal, when the two friends were apparently engaged in besieging the Gauḍa capital. This event has been ascribed by some writers to a date between 638 and 642 A.D.[1] There is no mention in that record of the Gauḍa invasion of Kāmarūpa during Bhāskaravarman’s youth. The reference to this event in the present charter may suggest that the Dūbi plates were issued when the memory of Bhāskara’s success in throwing off the Gauḍa yoke was not dimmed by the lapse of many years and by the subsequent military successes of the Kāmarūpa king. The date of this record may, therefore, be tentatively assigned to the earlier part of Bhāskaravarman’s reign.
It has been observed that the extant portion of the inscription before us does not speak of the locality which presumably was granted by the present charter. There is, however, mention of the old capital of the family and the new capital built by Sthiravarman without specifying their names. We have already discussed their probable location. In the legend on the seal, Pushyavarman is described as the lord of Prāgjyōtisha, which, together with the later Kāmarūpa, was the name applied to the dominons of the early kings of Assam. The heart of the country was the Gauhati region of Assam, but it extended upto the river Karatōyā in the east. Gauḍa was the name both of a people and of the country inhabited by them. A late tradition seems to suggest that, in the narrow sense, Gauḍa indicated only the small area lying to the south of the Padmā and the north of the Burdwan region in South-west Bengal, although it seems that originally the course of the Padmā lay to the north of the present locality called Gaur (Gauḍa) in the south of the Malda District. Thus the present District of Murshidabad together with the southern part of Malda may have been the original Gauḍa. At the time of our inscription, however, Gauḍa seems to have indicated the entire dominions of the Gauḍa kings. At a later date the name Gauḍa was applied to the whole of the western half of Bengal and still later to the entire Bengali-speaking area.[2] TEXT[3] [Metres : verses 1, 13, 22 Vaṁśasthavila ; verses 2, 37, 50-53, 55, 58, 62, 67, 68, 70, 75 Śārdūlavikrīḍita ; verse 3 Upajāti (Indravajrā-Vaṁśasthavila) ; verses 4, 6, 9, 11, 18, 20, 28, 49, 57 Upajāti (Indravajrā-Upēndravajrā) ; verses 5, 15, 40 Upajāti (Indravaṁśa-Vaṁśasthavila) ; verses 7, 8, 10, 12, 17, 25, 27, 29, 32-36, 41-48, 59, 61, 65 Anushṭubh ; verses 14, 16, 56 Indravaṁśā ; verses 19, 26, 30, 76 Indravajrā ; verse 21 Upēndravajrā ; verse 23 Upajāti (Upēndravajrā-Indravaṁśā) ; verses 31, 66, 69, 73, 74 Sragdharā ; verses 39 Upajāti (Indravaṁśa-Indravajrā) ; verse 54 Mandākrāntā ; verses 60, 64 Āryā ; verses 63, 71 Vasantatilaka ; verse 72 Śikhariṇī.] First Plate 1 [4]Praṇa[mya dēvaṁ śaśiśēkharaṁ priyaṁ Pinākinaṁ bhasma-kaṇair=vibhūshitaṁ(tam |) vibhūta][5]yē bhūtimat[āṁ] ______________________________________________________
[1] History of Bengal, op. cit. p. 78.
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