South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MAIN BRANCH

No. 9 : PLATE IX
INDORE PLATES OF PRAVARASENA II

...THESE plates were in the possession of Pandit Vāmanśāstrī Islāmpurkar of Indore. Their original findspot is not known, but, like some other grants¹ in the possession of the Pandit, they did not originally belong to Indore, but were evidently obtained by him somewhere else in the course of his search for Sanskrit manuscripts and antiquities. They were handed over by him to Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar, from whom they were obtained by Mr. Sushil K. Bose for publication. They have been edited, with facsimiles, by him in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXIV, pp. 52 f. They are edited here from the same facsimiles.

... The copper-plates² are three in number, measuring 7” long by 3^¾” broad. They are quite smooth, their edges not having been made thicker or raised into rims. About 2” from the left margin, each plate has a hole, about 5/16” in diameter for the ring which must have originally held the plates together; but neither the ring nor seal which it must have carried is now forthcoming. The grant must have originally consisted of four plates, but the first plate is missing. As in the case of the other grants of Pravarasēna, the plate must have been incised on one side only, so that about seven lines of the record are now lost The first two of the existing plates are inscribed on both the sides, while the last plate is inscribed on one side only. The inscription is in a good state of preservation. The extant portion of it consists of 34 lines, of which six are written on the first side of the first (i.e. originally the second) plate and seven on each of the other inscribed sides. The weight of the plates has not been recorded.

...The characters are of the box-headed variety of the southern alphabets resembling those of the other grants of Pravarasēna II. The only peculiarities that call for notice are as follows:−The rare medial ḷi occurs in sa-kḷipt-opakḷiptaḥ, line 23 ; .g and ś have in some cases a curve turned inward at the end of the left member as in the Ṛiddhapur plates; see Kauśika-sa-gōtra-, line 15 ; ṇ has no loop at the bottom in -pautriṇaḥ, line 4; n occurs in two forms, the cursive one as in -Rudrasēna-, line 1 and that resembling the Nāgarī form as in Rudrasēna-, line 6; t is generally unlooped, but in some cases it is confused with n; see -sañchitnana- for sañchintanain line 28; b appears in two forms as in the Siwanī Plates. The Language is Sanskrit, and except for an imprecatory verse in lines 31-33, the whole record is in prose. As regards orthography, we may note (i) the reduplication of a consonant after r as in –ārjjava-, line 2; (ii) that of the consonant before y as in –sarvv-āddhyaksha-, line 9; (iii) that of v seemingly after anusvāra in para-dattā[m]vvā, line 32 ; (iv) the use of ri for the medial ṛi in –Prithivi-, line 5 and vice versa in -kṛiyābhi-, line 25.

...The inscription is one of the Vākāṭaka Mahārāja Pravarasēna II. His genealogy was apparently given in the beginning exactly as in the Jāmb plates, but its earlier portion which described Pravarasēna I and Bhavanāga, the chief of the Bhāraśīvas, is now lost. The name of the place whence the plates were issued is also now lost, but as the grant is said to have been made at the victorious place of religious worship (vaijayikē dharma-sthānē),
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¹ See, for instance, the grants of Māhārāja Svāmidāsa and Māhārāja Bhuluṇḍa, which must have originally belonged to Khāndēsh. See my article in A.B.O.R.I., Vol. XXV, pp. 159 f. See also C.I.I., Vol. IV, pp. 5-10.
² The size of the plate and the position of the hole show that the Durg plate (No. 17)did not belong to this set.