North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PARAMARAS OF MALWA

UJJAIN COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF MAHAKUMARA LAKSHMIVARMAN

No. 40 ; PLATE XLI A
UJJAIN COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF MAHĀKUMĀRA LAKSHMIVARMAN
[ Vikrama] years 1191 & 1200

...THE copper-plate on which the subjoined inscription is engraved is stated to have been presented, in 1824, to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, by Major (afterwards Colonel) Tod, who found it at Ujjain, along with two other plates dealt with above. [7] All the three inscriptions were first edited, with facsimiles and translations, by H.T. Colebrooke, in the Transactions of the Society, Volume I, pages 230-239, and his paper on them was reprinted in his Miscellaneous Essaya, Volume II. pp. 297-334. Colebrooke’s transcripts of the inscriptions were amended in some places by F. E. Hall, J. F. Fleet, and lastly, by F. Kielhorn, who edited the records in the Indian Antiquary, Volume XIX (for 1890), pp. 345-353, and his writing dealing with the present inscription appears on pp. 345 and 349-351, but his paper is not illustrated. All the three plates were in the Library of the Society in 1890 when Kielhorn wrote ; but subsequently they were transferred to the British Museum where they are now preserved. At my request, Dr. G. S. Gai, the Chief Epigraphist in the Archaeological Survey of India, very kindly procured and supplied to me a photograph of the plate (as of the other two also)from the Museum, and the inscription is edited here with the kind permission of the authorities of the Museum and the consent of the Chief Epigraphist, who was good enough to procure the photograph for me.

...Like the preceding one, the present plate too is the first of apparently the two plates engraved with the inscription, the second of which has not so far been discovered. It has two holes perforated in the lower margin, for passing two rings with which the plates were originally held together ; but the rings too are not forthecoming. The plate is 40.64 cms. long by 24.44 cms. broad and weighs 2.06 kgms. Its edges were fashioned thicker than the inscribed surface, to protect the writing, which consists of twenty lines and is engraved on one side only. The inscription is not only incomplete but also in a very bad state of preservation. Kielhorn, who wrote in 1890, found the plate corroded, and in consequence of it, he remarked that there are “several aksharas which cannot be read with absolute certainty”. During the years that followed the corrosion appears to have further developed so that a number of aksharas which the lynx-eyed epigraphist could read with certainty have now become partly or wholly illegible or completely effaced, making the task of the decipherer difficult, particularly so far as the formal portion containing the names of places occurring therein is concerned. A patient
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[1] The daṇḍa is redundant.
[2] The sign of anusvāra has faintly come out.
[3] What follows this word is a parenthesis and the sentence is continued in 1. 14. जगतो . . .
[4] As in n. 11 on the preceding page.
[5] This akshara may also be read as दा, as Kielhorn takes it.
[6] The punctuation makes are redundant. The rest of the inscription is on the second plate which is lost.
[7] See Nos. 38 and 39, above.

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