North Indian Inscriptions

ADDITIONAL INSCRIPTIONS

PARAGAON PLATES OF RATNADEVA II: YEAR 885

village. They are edited here from excellent ink impressions kindly supplied by the Government Epigraphist.

They are two copper-plates, each measuring 12.2" broad and 7.7" high, and are inscribed on the inner side only. They have raised rims for the protection of the writing and are held together by a ring passing through a hole, .5" in diameter, in the centre of the top of the upper side of each plate. The ring carries a detachable round seal, 2.5" in diameter, which has, inside a circular border of knobs, the figure of Lakshmī seated on a lotus, with an elephant on either side pouring water over her. The figures of the goddess and the elephant are beautifully executed. Below the lotus-seat of the goddess appears the legend Rāja-śrīmad-Ratnadēva in two lines in the Nāgarī characters^¹ like those of the copper-plate grant. Below the legend is seen a sheathed sword as on the seal and coins of Pratāpamalla.^² The weight of the plates is 251½ tolas and that of the ring, 21 tolas.

The record consists of thirty lines, fifteen being inscribed on the inner side of each plate. The characters are Nāgarī. The average size of the letters is .4". They are neat ly written and carefully engraved, and resemble those of the Sarkhō plates of the same king³. The only peculiarities worth noticing are as follows:- The letter ṅ appears without a dot in -vēdāṅga-, l. 21; db is still without a horn on the left; see -dhātryā, I. 4; and the loop of th touches the line at the top; see ath=āsya, l. 3. The language is Sanskrit, and expect for Oṁ namō Vrabmaṇē in the beginning and the date and maṅgalaṁ mahā-śrīḥ at the end, the whole record is metrically composed. It has twenty-one verses, all of which are numbered. The metre of verse 12 is faulty. The first eleven verses. which trace the genealogy of Ratnadēva II from Kōkalla, occur in the same order in the earlier Sarkhō plates. The verses in the formal portion are, of course, different. The orthography shows the usual peculiarities of the use of v for b except in the perfect forms of the root bhū, the reduplication of the consonant following r and the use of the dental s for the palatal ś and vice versa, though rarely; see vrahmaṇē I. I; dharmma-, I. 7; sasvat-, I. 7 and āśīt=, I.9.

The plates refer themselves to the reign of Ratnadēva II of the Kalachuri Dynasty of Ratnapur. They record the grant, by Ratnadēva II, of the village Vōḍalā, situated in Kōsala, on the occasion of the solar eclipse which occurred in the month of Kārttika. The donee was Padmanābha, the son of Hariśarman and grandson of Sahadēva who had emigrated from the village Gōri. He belonged to the Bhāragava gōtra with the five pra varas Bhāragava, Chyavana, Āpnavāna, Aurva and Jāmadgnya.

The plates are dated, in the last line, on Wednesday, the first tithi of the bright fortnight of Āśvina in the Kalachuri year 885. The tithi and the year are expressed in decimal figures only. This is one of the few dates which name the Kalachuri era specifically. According to the epoch of 247-48 A.C., the date corresponds, for the expired year 885, to Wednesday, the 19th September 1134 A.C. On that day the tithi Āśvina śu. di. I commenced 19 h. 40 m. after mean sunrise. This date is important for determining the initial day of the Kalachuri year⁴. It shows clearly that with the epoch of 247-48 A.C. which is seen to hold good in all later dates from North India and Chhattisgarh, the tear of the
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¹ On the seal of the earlier Shēorinārāyāṇ plates Ratnadēva II bears the title Mahārāṇaka; see above, p. 422.
² Above, p. 544.
³ The name of the writer is not mentioned in this grant, but he may have been Kīrtidhara who had written the earlier grant of this king, dated K. 880; see above, p. 424 and n. 3.
⁴ For other dates of the same type, see Nos. 63 and 94, above.