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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA No. 3─ ALALPUR PLATES OF NARASIMHA II, SAKA 1215 D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND, AND P. ACHARYA, BHUBANESWAR Pandit Ratnākara Gargavaṭu (ordinarily Garābaru) of Bhubaneswar (Puri District, Orissa), who died in 1953, was an enthusiastic student of Indian epigraphy in his youth. About the year 1902, when he was engaged in studying the stone inscriptions fixed in the compound wall of the Ananta-Vāsudēva temple at Bhubaneswar, one Rāmadāsa Bābājī informed Pandit Gargavaṭu that he had seen a set of copper plates bearing writing similar to the stone inscriptions with which the Pandit was then engaged. On the Pandit pressing for further information about the plates the Bābājī came to him after a few days with the news that the Pandit’s cousin Harēkṛishṇa Sāmantarāya knew the whereabouts of the copper plates and might be of help in securing them for his examination. When Harēkṛishṇa was approached, he informed the Pandit that the plates were in the possession of Mukunda Sāmantarāya of the village of Alalpur (Alarpur of the Survey of India map, sheet No. 73-H/15) lying about four miles east of Bhubaneswar to the left of the Puri road. Pandit Gargavaṭu then saw Mukunda Sāmantarāya and learnt from him that the plates had been found in a stone-box which had been discovered while digging the foundation for a house in the village. The plates were seven in number and were strung together on a ring bearing a seal with the bull emblem. Mukunda Sāmantarāya was found to have put them by the side of his family deity along with which they were being worshipped by him daily. At the Pandit’s request Mukunda agreed to lend the plates for the decipherment of the inscription and Pandit Gargavaṭu carried them to his place personally, although they were very heavy.[1] The Pandit then made a serious attempt to decipher the text of the inscription and completed his transcript of the record after some time.[2] At that time Pandit Gargavaṭu was serving as a teacher in the Balasore School. A fellow teacher at the school, named Rādhākṛishṇa Basu, who was a Sanskritist and an M.A., later made some corrections in the Pandit’s transcript. Soon afterwards, Pandit Gargavaṭu himself made some further corrections in his transcript with the help of the text of a similar inscription published in the Viśvakōsha, s.v. Gāṅgēya.[3]
Some time after completing the preparation of the transcript, Pandit Gargavaṭu engaged a mūliā (day labourer) to carry the plates from his home at Bhubaneswar to Mukunda Sāmantarāya at Alalpur. Mukunda, however, became full of sorrow and indignation when he found the plates, which he had been worshipping regularly along with his family deity, thus defiled by the touch of a labourer of low caste. Considering them unworthy of veneration any longer, he sold the set to a coppersmith and it was ultimately melted by the latter. The inscription thus lost now exists only in Pandit Gargavaṭu’s transcript (with corrections later inserted by Rādbākṛishṇa Basu and himself) from which we are editing it with the Pandit’s kind permission.[4] As regards the fairly reliable nature of the transcript, it may be pointed out that there are fortunately cases where the genuineness of the Pandit’s reading can be verified. By way of illustration, we may refer to the passage śēvāyaty-Allālanāthaśarmmaṇē as read by N. N. Vasu in line 18 on the first side of plate VI of the Kendupatna inscription published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1896, part i, p. 256. Vasu took the word śēvāyati to be the same as Bengali sevāyita meaning a __________________________________________________
[1] Considering the weight of other records of the later Imperial Gaṅga monarchs, it seems that the seven plates
together with the seal weighed about one thousand tolas.
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