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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MAHARAJAS OF VALKA that he has thus been permitted by Us, so long as he enjoys and cultivates the field according to the conditions for enjoying brahmadēya (land).” The Dūtaka is Pratihāra Skanda. No. 4; PLATE II C THIS copper-plate was discovered in 1884, in the possession of one Motiram Patil of Śirpur1 in the West Khandesh District of the Bombay State. It has been edited before, with a lithograph, but without a translation, by Pandit Bhagvanlal Indraji in the Indian Antiquary, Vol. XVI (1887), pp. 98 ff. It is edited here from the same lithograph. It is a fragmentary plate, the extant piece measuring 7” broad and 4.5” high. It is intact at the top, the bottom and the right side; but from the left side a narrow piece, about 1” broad, has been broken off the whole way down, so that about three aksharas have been lost at the beginning of each line. There is no hole in the extant piece; and from the close resemblance which the record on this plate bears to the last two grants, it does not seem likely that there was any hole in the lost piece also. In any case no ring or seal was discovered with the plate. The present inscription is incised only on one side of it, but on the other side, Pandit Bhagvanlal found seven faintly cut shell-characters.
The inscription consists of nine lines. The writing is in a state of good preservation throughout. The average size of the letters is .3”. The characters belong to the western variety of the southern alphabets and resemble those of the plate of Mahārāja Svāmidāsa,2 though they are somewhat more angular. Like the latter, they have knobs at the top of the letters. They include, in line 9, the symbols for 100, 10 and 7. In some cases we see an admixture of different forms; v, for instance, has generally the triangular form as in the inscriptions of Svāmidāsa and Bhulunda; see sarvvān=ēva in line 2 and bhōgāy= aiva in line 7; but in yāvat, 1. 5, it has the same shape as in the copper-plate inscriptions of the Vākātaka Pravarsēna II. Pandit Bhagvanlal referred the present record to the beginning of the sixth century A. C., but in view of the earlier forms of some letters like d and m, I would date it about the middle or end of the fourth century A. C. The language is Sanskrit, and the inscription is in prose throughout. The wording of the grant resembles mutatis mutandis, that of the preceding grants of Svāmidāsa and Bhulunda, but it is written very carelessly. The orthography also shows the same peculiarities.
The inscription refers itself to the reign of Mahārāja Rudradāsa. He describes
himself as paramabhattāraka-pād-ānudhyāta ‘meditating on the feet of the Great Lord’, which
clearly indicates his feudatory status. The object of the inscription is to record the assent,
by Mahārāja Rudradāsa, to the gift of a field named Ghōtakatala situated on the western
boundary of the village Vikattānaka. This village seems to have been included in the
Kaśapura sub-divison (?). The boundary of the field extended as far as Kōhalattaka, which
may have been the name of a field or a village. The donee was the Brāhmana Drōnilaka of
the Bharadvāja gōtra. The place of issue is not named in the extant portion. It must 1This place-name is spelt as Shirpur in the Degree Map No. 46 K. |
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