North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR

to the Zamindar of Bilaigarh. He very kindly presented them to the Central Museum, Nagpur, where they are deposited now. They are edited here from excellent ink impressions kindly supplied by the Government Epigraphist for India.

They are two copper-plates, measuring 10½ "broad and 7" high. They are about .1" in thickness and weigh 121 tolas. Their ends have not been raised into rims; still the record on them is in an excellent state of preservation. At the centre of the top of each plate there is a hole, .6" in diameter, for the ring which must have held the two plates together, but no ring or seal has yet been discovered. The plates are inscribed on the inner side only. The record consists of 38 lines, of which 16 are inscribed on the first, and the remaining 22 on the second plate. The average size of the letters is .2".

The characters are Nāgarī. The letters are deeply cut and somewhat better formed than those of the Pēṇḍrābandh plates^¹ though, as shown below, the writer of both the records was the same. In other respects, they present the same peculiarities as those of the Pēṇḍrābandh plates. In line 2, a superfluous stroke has been scored off, while in line 5 two aksharas have been shown to be redundant by incising two vertical strokes at their top.

The language is Sanskrit. Except for ōṁ Vrahmaṇē namaḥ in the first line and the date in the last, the whole record is metrically composed. The verses number 30, all of which except v. 16 are numbered. Consequently, the numbers of verses from 17 onwards are less by one. In the genealogical portion all the verses are copied from earlier records like the Pēṇḍrēbandh plates. The orthography shows the usual peculiarities of the use of v for b (e.g., in Vrahmaṇē, 1.1), s for ś and vice versa (e.g., in sivam, 1.1 and śakala-, 1.24) as well as the confusion of y and j (e.g.,in yātō-for jātō-, 1.7 and jasas=for yaśas=, 1.9).

The inscription is one of the king Pratāpamalla of the Kalachuri Dynasty of Ratanpur. As all the verse in the genealogical portion have occurred before in the Pēṇḍrābandh plates, the present inscription does not add to our historical knowledge.² The object of it to record the grant, by Pratāpamalla, of the village Siralā to the Brāhmaṇa Haridāsa of the Sāṅkṛita gōtra^³ on the occasion of a lunar eclipse which took place on the full-moon day of Āshāḍha. , No year is mentioned in connection with the eclipse, but it was probably identical with Saṁvat 969, recorded at the end of the last line. Verse 20 eulogises the Śaiva Āchārya Iśānaśiva, but for what purpose it is not clear. The inscription was written by Pratirāja of the Gauḍa family who had also written the earlier Pēṇḍrābandh plates.^⁴

The date of the grant must plainly be referred to the Kalachuri era. According to the epoch of 247-48 A. C., the paurṇimā of Āshāḍha in the expired year 969 ended 18 h. 15 m. after mean sunrise on the 24th June 1218 A. C., on which day there was a lunar eclipse as stated in the grant.

There is only one place, viⱬ., the village Siralā, mentioned in this grant. No place- name corresponding to it can be traced in the vicinity of Bilaigarh. Its site seems to be occupied now by the village Pawni where the plates were found underground. This village lies only about two miles to the south of Kaiṭā which was granted by the same king by his Pēṇḍrābandh plates.
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¹ Above, No. 101.
² The verse descriptive of Kamalarāja is omitted in this inscription as in No. 101.
³ See below, p. 552, n. 9.
⁴ see above, No. 101, 1.34.