South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MAIN BRANCH

No. 17 : PLATE XVII
AN UNFINISHED DURG PLATE

...THIS plate was discovered at Mōhallā, the headquarters of the former Pānābāras Zamindarī in the Durg District of Madhya Pradesh. An ink impression of it was sent to the late Dr. Hiralal, but he did not consider it of sufficient importance for being included in his Inscriptions in C.P. and Berar. I came to know of it in January 1934 from a casual reference in his letter. Later, he sent me an ink impression of it on which he had fortunately jotted down the name of its owner. In the course of inquiries made by Mr. B.A. Bambawale, Deputy Commissioner of Durg, it was elicited that the plate was originally found at Mōhallā. It is now deposited in the Central Museum, Nagpur. I edited it with a facsimile in the Bhārata Itihāsa Saṁśōdhaka Maṇḍala Quarterly, Vol. XV¹. Later, I re-edited it in Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XXII, pp. 207 f. The inscription is edited here from the original plate.

...This plate was intended to be the first of a set of three or four copper-plates recording the charter of a Vākāṭaka king. It is inscribed only on one side. It measures 8” by 3.75”, and weighs 19^1/2” tōlās. It is only 1/20” on thickness and is thus the thinnest of all Vākāṭaka plates discovered so far. About 1.9” from the middle of the proper right margin there is a hole, .35” in diameter, for a ring intended to connect it with other plates of the set. But no such ring has been discovered so far. The size of the plate and the position of the hole show that it does not belong to the same set as the Indore plates or the Pāṭnā Museum third plate of Pravarasēna II.

...The plate contains five lines only. The letters are very neatly cut and do not show through on the reverse, though the plate is very thin. The ends of the plate are neither fashioned thicker nor raised into rims; still the inscription is in a perfect state of preservation.

... The characters are of the box-headed variety of the southern alphabets. They resemble in a general way those of the Ṛiddhapur plates of Prabhāvatīguptā. The only peculiarities that call for notice are as follows: The medial au is bipartite as in other Vākāṭaka grants ; ḍ has a round back and is not clearly distinguished from d ; see -shōḍaśy-, line 1; m appears in a transitional cursive form, with the lower box attached to its left arm as in Agnishṭōm-, line 1; its other form with the box attached to the right vertical, which is generally seen in the charters of Pravarasēna II, does not appear in this record. The two forms appear side by side in the Ṛiddhapur plates of Prabhāvatīguptā. The form of m used in the present plate develops ultimately into that found in the charters of the kings of Śarabhapura as well as in those of Tīvaradeva. The final t and m appear in a much reduced size and the latter has a looped base. The language is Sanskrit and the extant portion is wholly in prose. The orthography shows the usual reduplication of the consonant preceding y and of that following r; see Bhāgiratthy-, line 4 and Āptōryyām-, line 1.

... With the exception of the place of issue, but record is identical, so for as it goes, with the initial portion of the charters of Pravarasēna II and Pṛithvīshēṇa II. It mentions by name only one king of the dynasty, viz., Pravarasēna I. It then refers to his grandson who was a great devotee of Svāmi-Mahābhairava, and who was the daughter’s son of Bhavanāga, the Mahārāja of (the family of ) the Bhāraśivas. The record on the plate stops just before the
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¹ The article is included in G.H. Khare’s Sources of the Mediaeval History of the Deccan, Vol. II, pp. 1 f.