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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR NO. 86; PLATE LXX THESE plates were discovered in 1944 at Daikōni, 7 miles almost due north of Jānjgir, in the Jānjgir tahsil of the Bilaspur District in the Chhattisgrah Division of Madhya Pradesh. They were procured from the owner by the Deputy Commissioner, Bilaspur, who sent them to the Government Epigraphist for India for decipherment. The inscription is edited here for the first time from an excellent ink impression which I owe to the kindness of the Government Epigraphist. They are two copper-plates inscribed on one side only. They measure 11. 7” broad and 6.8” high, and have their rims slightly raised for the protection of the writing. They are strung together by a circular ring which passes through a hole, .6” in diameter, at the top of each plate. The ring is soldered into two bottom of a circular seal about 2. 5” in diameter. The surface of the seal is divided into two parts. In the upper part appears as usual the figure of Lakshmī with an elephant on either side pouring water over her head. The lower part contains the legend Rājā-śrīmat-Pṛithvīdēvaḥ in relief, engraved in two lines. The seal has for its border a circle of knobs. The two plates weigh 224 tolas and the ring with the seal 37 tolas. The characters are Nāgarī. The letters are beautifully formed and are deeply incised. They closely resemble those of the Sarkhō plates of Ratnadēva and were probably written by the same scribe Kīrtidhara who is mentioned in the latter plates.¹ The language is Sanskrit. Except for ōṁ namō Vrahmaṇē in the beginning and the date at the end, the inscription is metrically composed throughout. There are, in all, 18 verses, all of which are numbered. Of these, the first eleven are repeated from earlier records of the dynasty such as the Sarkhō plates of Ratnadēva II. The five verses that follow describing the donor, the donee, the occasion and the object of the gift are new. Finally, the record ends with two benedictive and imprecatory verses of the usual type. In respect of orthography, we may notice that ś and s are occasionally confused and v is usually written for b except in the forms babhūva and babhūvuḥ ; see sasvat, 1.6 and Vrahmaṇē, 1. I.
The inscription refers itself to the reign of Pṛithvīdēva II of the Kalachuri Dynasty of Ratanpur. The first eleven verses which trace the royal genealogy from the mythical king Kārtavīrya through Kōkkala of Tripurī down to Ratnadēva II are common to several earlier and later records of the dynasty. Verse 12 describing Pṛithvīdēva II is new, but the description it gives of that king is quite conventional. The object of the inscription is to register the grant, by Pṛithvīdēva II, of the village Budukunī situated in Madhyadēśa or the central part of his dominion. The donee was the Brāhmaṇa Vishṇu, the son of Śivadēva and grandson of Srōttama, who belonged to the Vasta gōtra with five pravaras. The grant was made on the occasion of a lunar eclipse, on the fifteenth tithi of the bright fortnight of Kārttika. The plates were issued on Sunday, the 11th tithi of the dark fortnight of Mārgaśīrsha in the year 890 (expressed in decimal figures only) of an unspecified era. The date must plainly be referred to the Kalachuri era. It regularly corresponds,
for the expired Kalachuri year 890, to Sunday, the 30th October 1138 A. C. On that
day the 11th tithi of the dark fortnight of the pūrṇimānta Mārgaśīrsha commenced 9 h. 10 m.
after mean sunrise.² This tithi was not current at sunrise that day, but it is cited here pro- 1 Kīrtidhara seems to have died some time before K. 896, the date of the Bilaigarh plates (No. 89,
below), which were written by his son.
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