|
The Indian Analyst
|
|
South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA Paramabhaṭṭāraka-Mahārājādhirāja-Paramēśvara Vishṇugupta, during whose reign the inscription was engraved, seems to be no other than the king of that name belonging to the so called ‘Later Gupta’ dynasty. Vishṇugupta was the son of Dēvagupta (from Kamaladēvī) and grandson of Ādityasēna. Of Ādityasēna’s time, we have the Shāhpur (Pāṭnā District) inscription[1] dated in year 66 of the Harsha era corresponding to 672 A.D. as well as the undated Aphsaḍ[2] (Gayā District) and Mandār hill[3] (Bhāgalpur District) inscriptions. Vishṇugupta’s son from Ijjādēvī was Jīvitagupta II who is the last known monarch of the dynasty. For this king’s from we have only the Deo-Baraṇārk (Arrah, Shāhābād District) inscription.[4] So far only one record of Vishṇugupta’s time has been discovered. It is, as already referred to above, the Mangraon (Shāhābād District) stone inscription dated on his seventeenth regnal year. The importance of the inscription under review lies in the fact that it is the first ‘ Later Gupta ’ epigraph discovered in the Hazārībāg District and the second of Vishṇugupta’s records so far brought to light. As king Vishṇugupta must have flourished about the beginning of the eighth century, the inscription helps us in assigning a date to some of the ancient relies on the Kaulēśvarī hill.
D. An Inscribed Terracotta Plaque A terracotta plaque was received by me for examinations from Mr. Radha Krishna Choudhary, Professor of History in the Ganesh Dutt College at Begusarai in the Monghyr District. The plaque is stated to have been presented to Mr. Choudhary a few years ago by one of his pupils, who hailed from a village under the Teghra Police Station of the Begusarai Subdivision. Unfortunately its actual findspot and the story of its discovery are unknown. The plaque is semicircular in shape and has a flat obverse and raised reverse. The base of the semicircle, is about 2½ inches long while its bisector is about 1¾ inches in length. There are four or probably five lines of writing engraved on the obverse of the plaque while two linens impressed by means of a sealing, are noticed on its reverse. A few letters from the right end of the inscription on the obverse have broken away. My reading and interpretation if the record are published in the following lines with Mr. Choudhary’s permission. The characters employed in the inscription on the obverse of the plaque belong to a cursive form of the Gauḍīya alphabet while those in the writing on the reverse have the standard forms of the letters of the same script. It is obvious that the two lines of writing on the reverse were impressed on the plaque when the clay was quite soft before it had dried up or had been baked in the sun. An examination of the letters of the inscription on the obverse shows that they were engraved before the plaque had been burnt in fire. It is not certain whether this record was engraved when the clay was still a little soft or it has already quite hardened as a result of baking in the sun, although an examination of the engraving appears to support the first alternative. In any case, there could not have been a long interval between the impressing of the sealing on the reverse of the plaque and the engraving of the inscription on its obverse. But there is no doubt that the record on the reverse is earlier, at least by a few hours, than the epigraph on the obverse. The cursive Gauḍīya characters of the inscription on the obverse of the plaque resemble in some respects the letters of the modern Bengali and Maithilī alphabets. On palaeographical grounds, the record may be assigned to the thirteenth or fourteenth century A.D., although, as will be seen below, the date quoted in it appears to point to the last quarter of the twelfth century. __________________________________________________________
[1] CII, Vol. III, p. 210.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
