South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MAIN BRANCH

No. 2: PLATE II
POONA PLATES OF PRABHAVATIGUPTA

...THESE copper-plates were found in the possession of one Balwant Bhau Nagarkar, a coppersmith of Poonā who originally hailed from Ahmadnagar in the Mahārāshṭra State. They are said to have been preserved as an heirloom in his family for some generations. They, however, seem to have originally belonged to the Hiṅgaṇghāṭ tahsil of the Wardhā District in Vidarbha; for, as shown below, most of the places mentioned in this grant can be located in that tahsil. The plates were at first very briefly noticed by Prof. K. B. Pathak in the Indian Antiquary, Vol. XLI, pp. 214-15. Their importance was immediately recognised and the information furnished by them was utilised by V.A. Smith in his article entitled ‘The Vākāṭaka Dynasty of the Central Provinces and Berar’ published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1914, pp. 317 f. They were later edited with facsimiles and an English translation by K. B. Pathak and K. N. Dikshit in the Epigraphia Indcia, Vol. XV, pp. 40 f. They are edited here from the same facsimiles as their present whereabouts are not known.

...The plates are two in number, measuring 9^¼” long and 5^¾” broad. ‘They are strung together by means of a ring ¼” thick and ¾” in diameter) with soldered ends, passing through a hole ½” in diameter, cut through the center of one side of the plates. The ring is further made to pass through the perforated handle of the seal, which is plain and oval in shape (length 2^7/8”, breadth 2^1/8”), and contains four lines of inscription, with figures of the sun and the moon above and a flower at the bottom’. The weight of the plates and the ring is 97 tolās.

... The record is engraved only on the inner side of the two plates, the first containing 10 lines, and the second, 12 lines. The letters on the first plate are somewhat larger than those on the second ; the average size of the former is ¼” and that of the latter is 1^3/5”. The writing is in a fair state of preservation.

... The characters are mostly of the nail-headed variety having a triangle with its apex downwards at the top of the letters. A few letters, however, are of the box-headed type in which all other inscriptions of the Vākāṭakas were written. See, e.g., Vākāṭaka- in line 1 of the seal and si of Siddham in line 1 on the first plate. It is noteworthy that besides their box-heads, some of these letters (e.g. v and s) have forms which are different from those noticed elsewhere in this grant. They agree with those in other grants of boxheaded characters. It would seem therefore that the scribe began to write the present grant in boxheaded characters, but not being accustomed to them, he soon changed over to nailheaded characters with which he was more familiar. He may have hailed from North India where the nail-headed characters were in vogue.

... The characters show an admixture of northern and southern peculiarities, the former predominating over the latter. Thus, g and s have a loop at the lower end of their left member ; ṇ has its vertical and upper bar divided into two; sh and ś are looped, but t and m are not; the vertical of l is shortened and the tail of h turns sharply to the left. Besides these northern characteristics, the following southern ones may also be noticed: a, k and r have a curve turned to the left at the bottom of their verticals; the lingual ḍ is round-backed ; the medial ṛi is shown by a curve turned to the left in sa-kṛipt-ōpakṛiptaḥ, line 18, but in pṛithivyam-,