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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MAHISHMATI NO. 6; PLARE III B THIS Copper-plate was found in the Barwani District in Madhya Bhārat. Its exact findspot has not been recorded. The inscription on it was first noticed very briefly in the Annual Report of the Rajputana Museum for 1924-25, and was later on edited, without any facsimile or translation, by Mr. R.R. Haldar in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XIX, pp. 261 f. Its contents and date were discussed by me in an article entitled ‘The Age of the Bāgh Caves’ in the Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXI, pp. 79 f. The record is edited here from an excellent facsimile which I owe to the kindness of the Government Epigraphist for India. The record is incised on a single copper-plate and on one side of it, measuring 8" broad by 3.2" high. The plate has no ring-hole and there is no indication of a seal having ever been attached to it. The inscription consists of eight lines, of which the last, containing the sing manual of Subandhu, is incised in the margin of the left. The characters resemble those of the so-called Indore plate on Svāmidāsa and have knobs or boxes at the top. The numerical symbols for 100, 60 and 7 occur in line 6. The language is Sanskrit. There is no admixture of Prakrit forms in the wording of the grant. The orthography shows the usual reduplication of the consonant preceding and following r, see garttā-pathakah, 1.1 and -paddrakē, 1.2.
The inscription refers itself to the reign of Mahārāja Subandhu. Unlike Svāmidāsa and other princess of Khandesh, he gives no indication that he acknowledged the suzerainty of any other ruler, though, as shown below, his grant is probably dated in the same reckoning as theirs. The object of the present inscription is to record the grant, by Mahārāja Subandhu, of a field owned by a person named Sāti in the village (padraka) Sōhajanā which was included in the pathaka of Udumbaragartā. The donee was the Brāhmana Shashthisvāmin of the Bhāradvāja gōtra. The order was issued from the city of Māhishmatī. As no word like vāsaka is attached to the place-name, Māhishmati was probably the royal capital at the time. The Dūtaka was Guhadāsa. The royal sign manual Śrī-Subandhōh occurs in the margin on the left as in the case of the Khandesh plates.1 The record is dated in the year 167 (expressed by numerical symbols) of an unspecified era, on the seventh tithi of the bright fortnight of Bhādrapada. The date does not admit of verification. Mr. Haldar, who first edited the present inscription, referred its date to the Gupta era and took it as equivalent to 486 A.C.2 He thought that Mahārāja Subandhu was a subordinate of the Gupta Emperor Budhagupta whose Eran Stone inscription is dated in the Gupta year 165 (484-85 A.C.), i.e., just two years before the date of the Barwani grant. This view, however, presents several difficulties. If Mahārāja Subandhu was a
feudatory of the Guptas, it looks strange that he does not name his liege-lord or even
generally refer to the suzerainty of the Guptas as in the grants of the so-called Parivrājaka
Mahārājas. As a matter of fact, Gupta suzerainty seems to have received a setback in
Central India in the second half of the fifth century A.C.; for we have several records
from Mandasor and the adjoining places in the ancient Dāśārna country, which are dated
not in the Gupta era, but in the Mālava samvat. Further, we learn from the Bālāghāt plates of Prithivīshēna II (circa 470-90 A.C.) that the king of Mālava was one of the vassals of his father Narēndrasēna. If Daśārna and Mālava had broken away from the Gupta
1 Above, Nos. 2 and 3. |
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