North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR

No. 94; PLATE LXXVII
AMODA PLATES (SECOND SET) OF PRITHVIDEVA II: (KALACHURI ) YEAR 905

THIS set of two copper-plates was found together with another (called the First Set) issued by the same king^¹ and two others^² at Amōdā, 40 miles south by east of Bilaspur, in the Jānjgir tahsil of the Bilaspur District in Madhya Pradesh. This inscription, like that on the first set, has been edited with lithographs, but without a translation, by Rai Bahadur Hiralal in the Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. I, pp. 405 ff. It is edited here from the original plates which are deposited in the Central Museum, Nagpur.

The plates are inscribed on one side only. They are much bigger in size than those of the First Set, measuring from 15.3” to 15.6” broad and 8.8” high. They are about .I” in thickness. Their ends are slightly raised for the protection of the writing. A small piece at the lower proper left corner of the first plate has been broken away and lost, which has resulted in the mutilation of one akshara at the end of line 18. Again, some aksharas in the lower proper right corner of the second plate have been slightly damaged by verdigris. Otherwise, the plates are in a state of good preservation. The damaged letters can be easily supplied from the First Set which has a large portion in common with the present record. The plates were held together by a ring passing through a hole, .5” in diameter, at the top of each. The ring has a circular seal, 2.8” in diameter, closely resembling that of the First Set in device and legend. The weight of the two plates is 255 tolas and that of the ring and the seal, 15 tolas.

The characters are Nāgarī. The letters are deeply incised and somewhat better formed than those of the First Set. Their average size is .4”, except in the last seven lines on the first plate where it is reduced to .3”.As shown below, the present charter was written only about five years after that of K.900 and the writer of both was the same. Consequently, we see the same palæographical and orthographical peculiarities here as in the latter charter. The language is Sanskrit. Except for ōṁ namō Vrahmaṇē in the beginning and the name of the engraver and the date at the end, the record is in verse throughout. It contains 28 verses, all of which are numbered. Of these, the first eleven, which give the genealogy of the donor, are copied verbatim from the earlier grant. The next four, which mention the donees, their gōtra and the village granted to them, are, of course, different. Then come twelve benedictive and imprecatory verses, of which four are found in the earlier record. The last verse, which gives particulars about the writer, is, again, identical in both the records.

The inscription is one of Pṛithvīdēva II of the Kalachuri Dynasty of Ratanpur. The object of it is to record the grant, by Pṛithvīdēva II, of the village Buḍubuḍū in the Mdhya-maṇḍala to the three Brāhmaṇa brothers Sīlaṇa, Pīthana and Lakaṇa, the sons of Dēvaśarman who was himself the son of Mihirasvāmin of the Chandrātrēya gōtra, with the three pravaras Chandra, Atri and Spāvana.^³ From the other Amōdā plates we have seen that Sīlaṇa was the eldest of the three brothers and was the sole recipient of the grant recorded in it. The present grant was made on the akshaya-
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¹ No. 91, above.
² Viz., the Amōdā plates of Pṛithvīdēva I, K. 831 (No. 76) and the Amōdā plates of Jājalladēva II, K. 91[9] (No. 99).
³ This is probably a mistake for Pāvana (fire). See above, p. 475, n. 1.