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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
INCRIPTIONS OF THE EARLY KALACHURIS No.12; PLATE VI THESE plates were found in the possession of a Rajput family of Abhona, a village in Kalvan taluka of the Nasik District in the Bombay state. They were edited, with lithographs and a translation, by prof. K.B. Pathak in the Epigraphia Indica, VoI. IX,pp. 296 ff. I edit them here from the same lithographs. The Copper-plates are two in number and are inscribed on one side only, each one measuring 9-7” broad and 7” high Except for a mistake here and there, the writing on them has been well executed and is in a state of good preservation. Each plate has two holes about 5” in diameter at t he top for the rings which must have originally connected it with the other plate of the set, but no ring or seal was apparently discovered. The weight of the plates is 132 tolas.1 The record consists of thirty-four lines, seventeen being inscribed on the inners side of each plate. The average size of letters is 25â
The characters belong to the western variety of the southern alphabets.2 The letters have, in most cases, a knob at the top and show, as usual some admixture of northen peculiarities. The Matras, for instance, for the medial e, ai and au are placed above the line, see â vipyle, 1. I, gunairâ, 1.6, Krishnarajo, 1.5. The medial au is indicated by three matras only the middle one of which rises above the line; see pautr-,1.20 and Gautama-, 1.21; kh in likhitam-, 1-34 has a loop larger than its hook; n appears with a loop, while t is without it; see gagana-tala, 1. I; ngenerally appears in its southern form, its upper portion being undivided, see e.g., guna-, 1.2, but the northern form also occurs in a few places, see kriy-otsarppanaya, and turned to the left as in vimala, 1. I. Besides these northern charcatertisc the following peculiarties of other invidual letters may also be noticed:â the initaial is indicated by a curve with a notch in the centre over two dots, generally bent down, and in some cases it is brought down lower than in the Traikutaka inscriptions,3 thus showing a later palaeogrpahic stage, see vicharta-, 1.8, par-abhimana and vinayaya, 1.9; in a few cases (e.g., naand jña) it is turned upwards, see e.g., Katachchurinam-, 1.3, =ajñana,- 1. 26, while in the case of ja it encircles the letter on the left, see jaynte, 1.29; in medial the length is denoted by a curve in the circle for short see Ujjayni- 1. I; the medial u is marked in three wats (I) by lengthening the vertical stroke to end in a small curve as in vipule 1. I; (2) in the case of letters whose vertical stroke already ends in a curve (e.g. k,r, etc) by adding another curve to the vertical and letter upwards to the right, see pad-anuddhyatah, 1. 16; the medical u also appears in two ways in bhuri- 1, 13 and yuthapa 1.7; d is distinguished from d by its tail, see-apidita 1, 12; the subscript n consist only of a loop Cf. âarnvava 1.20; th is shown either with a notch in the base as in yuthapena 1.7, or with a ringlet as in âapratiratha-, 1.10; in its subscript form, it is indicated by a curve curling to the right, see sthithi, 1.20 1Ind. Ant, VoI. XLII, p. 270.
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