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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA No. 31 ; PLATE XXXIV A ...THE inscription edited here for the first time is on a copper-plate which was found, in 1968, at Dēwās, the chief town of a District of the same name and situated about 35 kms. north of Indore, in Madhya Pradesh. The circumstances which just saved the plate from being destroyed are interesting and may be narrated here first. It was on the 4th of October in 1968 that Dr. S. N. Nagu, a medical practitioner of Indore, happened to vist Dēwās, to treat his patient at that place, and incidently knowing that a copper-smith at that place had recently cut into pieces an old copper plate, he ran to the smith’s shop and saw two circular fragments bearing fresh marks of cutting. Inquiring into the details, the Doctor came to know that the smith had just then cut those two circular fragments from a copper-plate for fixing them into the bottom of buckets, and that the other pieces which were cut along with them had been sold by him to a merchant from Ujjain, who, in his turn, had sold them to a firm working on metal, some 5 kms. off. Visiting all the different places the same day, Dr. Nagu ultimately succeeded in collecting six pieces which were all inscribed and which he brought to me immediately. Carefully adjusting the fragments, I found that they formed a complete plate, inscribed and issued by king Naravarman of the Paramāra dynasty ; and after getting the fragments welded carefully so as to restore the plate to its original form, I edit the inscription here for the first time. [1]
...It is a single plate and the first discovered so far, of a grant which was written, obviously. on two plates, the second of which is missing. The plate measures 35 cms. Broad by 27 cms. high, and contains 18 lines of writing, covering a space about 31 cms. by 24.5 cms, and is inscribed only on one side. It weighs 2 kgs. and 35 gms. It is about .4 cms. thick at the edges which are raised into rims to protect the writing, which, though not so carefully and beautyfully engraved as in the Bēṭmā and the Dēpālpur copper-plates, [2] is fairly legible and bears a general resemblance to that of the Kadambapadraka grant which is dealt with just below. Parts and limbs of a few letters are occasionally not well formed and the writing has also suffered from the fresh damages as related above. But the whole of it can be restored with certainly. In the lower margin the plate has two holes, each of about the diameter of .6 cms., disturbing the last line of the writing, which is not complete and was continued, obviously, on another plate. It is unfortunate that all attempts to obtain the second plate have failed ; but, in spite of it, the inscription is important, as will be seen below. The rings which originally held the two plates together are also missing like the second plate. ...The average size of the letters is about 1 cm. The characters are Nāgarī of the 11th century A.C. The initiai i is formed by two hollow dots placed horizontally and subscribed by the mātrā of a short u, as in Iṅguṇīpadra, 1.6 and iti, 1.14 ; the consonant k loses its loop when used as a superscript, as in kshiti, 1. 14 ; the letters ch and v are well distinguished, but occasionally the latter is engraved wrongly in place of the former, cf. vanaschara-scharūpaṁ. 1.14 ; t and h have sometimes not developed their fine tail of the fore-limb ; and dh has developed a horn above its left limb, as in Siṁdhurāja, 1. 3 and Dhanapāla, 1. 16. There is little distinction between p and y, cf. kalyāṇa and kalpānta, both in 1. 2. R is formed as a vertical with its lowest extremity slightly bent to right and a horizontal stroke attached to the middle on its left, cf. parama 1.3. The form of the palatal sibilant resembles that of the dental in showing the horizontal stroke joining both of its limbs but it is distinguished by its beginning with a loop or a curve or by showing a bend in its tail ; cf. śirasā, 1. 1, where both the sibilants occur. ...
The language is Sanskrit, and excepting two stanzas in the beginning and two in the middle,
[1] A paper on it, with my own transcript of the text, was contributed by me to the Arch. Sect. of the A.I.
Or. Conf. held at Vārāṇasī in 1968, and it is printed in its Proceedings, on pp. 351 ff.
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