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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE EARLY GURJARAS No. 22 ; PLATE XV THESE plates were discovered in 1936 in the possession of Shid family of Anjanēri, a village about four miles to the east of Trimbak, the well-known place of pilgrimage in the Nasik District of the Bombay State. They were brought to my notice by Rao Bahadur K. N. Dikshit, Director General of Archœology. I edit the inscription here from the original plates which were kindly sent to me by the Superintendent of Archœology, Western Circle, Poona.1 They are two copper-plates each measuring 12.8" in breadth and 9.4 " in height. At the top of each plate there are two round holes, .6" in diameter, for two rings which must have originally held them together. One of the rings has since been lost. The ends of the other are soldered into the bottom of a ladle-shaped seal. On the face of the latter, which is roundish and measures about 1.8" in diameter, there appears in relief on a countersunk surface a solar symbol similar to that on the seals of the Kairā plates2 of Dadda II, and below it the legend Śrī-Jayabhata. The plates, which are inscribed on the inner side only, are in a state of good preservation. Their ends are slightly raised for the protection of the writing. There are thirty-nine lines in all, of which eighteen are inscribed on the first plate, and the remaining twenty-one on the second. The average size of the letters is .15".
The Characters belong to the western variety of the southern alphabets and resemble those of the Navsāri plates. The sign-manual of the donor is in the northern characters. As shown below, he is identical with Jayabhata III who granted the Navsāri plates. It is noteworthy, therefore, that the formation of some aksharas in the sign-manual of the present grant is different; compare, e.g., the aksharas ma, ja, bha and ta in the two signatures. The grant is written in a careless and cursive hand. Notice, for instance, the cursive form of li in kali and –ākulita-, both in 1.2. Several letters are mis-shapen or incompletely formed owing to the carelessness of either the writer or the engraver. See, e.g., ś in–nistrinśa-, 1.5 and śrī-Jayabhata-, 1.6; m in –samudbhūta-, 1.13 and Kachchhikāmra-, 1.25, n in –pramānam, 1.27 etc. Many letters appear in varying forms; see, for instance, the form of ch in –charita-, 1.3 and–pravachan-, 1.6; of th in–nātha-, 1.1, -manōratha-, 1.7 and yathā, 1.15 ; of p in –vismāpita-and–lōkapāla-, both in 1.3; of m in -muni- and –Manu-, both in 1.6; of y in –yaśō-, 1.4, mayā, 1.15 and Vijadamba, 1.24; of r in –nivārana- and –guru-, both in 1.8; of v in iva and –vilasit-, both in 1.2, -vāsinah 1.34 etc. Owing to the similarity of bh, g and ś, as well as of v, b and dh it sometimes becomes difficult to say what exactly was intended to be expressed. The jihvāmūlīya occurs in 1.14. Punctuation, which is redundant in several places, is generally indicated by a single dot, but in metrical passages by single or double vertical strokes. The numerical symbols for 400, 60, 10 and 1 occur in the last line. The language in Sanskrit. Except for six benedictive and imprecatory verses
at the end, the whole record is in prose. The text of the inscription is mutatis mutandis
identical with that of the Navsāri plates. It shows generally the same orthographical
peculiarities. One additional peculiarity noticed here is the doubling of k before t as
in–samyukkta-, 1.33, and–nirbhukkta, 11. 36-37, which is in accordance with Pānini’s rule,
VIII, 4, 47. 1Since this article was written, the plates have been edited by Messrs. Vats and Diskalkar in the
Ep. Ind., Vol. XXV, pp. 292 ff. |
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