South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MAIN BRANCH

No. 7 : PLATE VII
SIWANĪ PLATES OF PRAVARASĒNA II

....THESE plates were found in the possession of a Malguzar named Hazari Gond living at the village of Piṇḍarai in the Siwanī tahsil of the Chhindwāḍā District of Madhya Pradesh. They were brought to notice in 1836, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. V, pp. 726 f., where Mr. James Prinsep published his transcript of the text and a translation of it, accompanied by a lithograph of the plates. They were next edited by Dr. Fleet in the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum. Vol. III, pp. 243 f. together with a translation and lithographs of the plates. They are edited here from the same lithographs.

...‘The plates, of which the first and last are inscribed on one side only, are five in number, each measuring about 83/_x6” by 4^1/2” at the ends and somewhat less in the middle. They are quite smooth, the edges of them having been neither fashioned thicker, nor raised into rims. The inscription is in a state of perfect preservation throughout. . . . The engraving is very good . . . Towards the proper right end of each plate, there is a hole for a ring to connect them. The ring is circular, about ¾” thick and 3^7/8” in diameter. The ends of it were flattened off, so as to overlap, and were fastened with a pin or bolt . . . . The seal is a thin flat disc of copper, about 3^{1/I 6}” in diameter. A bolt in the center of it secures it to a thin band of copper, about 5/8” broad and 3^1/4” in circumference, by which it slides on the ring mentioned above. Across the surface of the seal there is a legend in four lines.

The weight of the five plates is about 3 lbs. 4^1/4 oz., and of the ring and seal, 5^1/4 oz.; total 3 lbs. 91/2 oz. The average size of the letters is about 1/4", except on the seal and the last plate, where they are larger.¹’ The characters are of the box-headed variety of the southern alphabets, resembling those of the Jāmb plates. The only peculiarities that may be noted are as follows−kh has a rectangle at the bottom; see -khanakaḥ, line 29; ḍ is not distinguished clearly from d; see daṇḍa, line 11; n shows the same form as in modern Nāgarī; see -yājinaḥ, line 2; -b , has two forms (i) the square one as in Bēṇṇā-,, line 17 and (ii) that with a notch in the left limb as in Bṛihaspati-, line 1 ; a final consonant is indicated by its short form and in some cases by means of a short horizontal stroke at the top; see dṛishṭam, line 1 and rāja-vanśānām, line 5. The sign of the upadhmānīya occurs in line 3 of the legend. The language is Sanskrit, and except for the legend and two benedictive and imprecatory verses at the end, the inscription is in verse throughout. As regards orthography, we may note (i) the reduplication of the consonant following r as in Āptōryyām-, line I and that of the consonant preceding y and v as in Bhāgīratthy-, line 5 and addhvaryyavē, lines 19-20 ; (ii) the use of n for anusvāra before ś and s as in vanśa-, line 5 and 17 and ansa-., line 4; and (iii) the use of li for the medial vowel ḷi in klipt-ōpaklipta-, in line 30.

...The inscription, which opens with ḍṛishṭam, is one of Mahārāja Pravarasēna II of the Vākāṭaka dynasty, His genealogy is given here exactly as in his other grants, his maternal grandfather being called Dēvagupta. The object of the present inscription is to record the grant, by Pravarsēna II, of the village Brahmapūraka to the Brāhmaṇa Dēvaśarmāchārya of the Maudgalya gōtra and Taittirīya śākhā. The place of issue is not named in the record, but it was probably the royal capital Pravarapura ; for, the grant is said to have been made at
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¹ Fleet, C.I.I., Vol. III, pp. 243 f.