South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MAIN BRANCH

No. 18: PLATE XVIII
BĀLĀGHĀṬ PLATES OF PṚITHIVĪSHĒṆA II

...THESE plates were found ‘hanging to a tree in the jungle’ somewhere in the District of Balāghāt in Madhya Pradesh some time before May 1893. They were sent to the Asiatic Society of Bengal and were later entrusted to Dr. Kielhorn for being edited. His article on them together with facsimiles was published posthumously in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. IX, pp. 267 f. The plates are edited here from the same facsimiles. Their present whereabouts are not known.

... ‘The plates are five in number, each between 6^3/4” and 6^7/8” long by between 3^7/8” and 4” high; two of them contain no writing whatever, while of the three others (here described as plates i, ii and iii), the second is engraved on both sides and the first and the third on one side only. Though the plates have no raised rims and are not fashioned thicker near the edges, the engraving on them is throughout in a perfect state of preservation. The five plates are strung on a ring, which passes through a hole about 1^1/4” distant from the middle of the proper right margin of each plate”. The ring is circular, about ¾” thick and between 3” and 3^3/4” in diameter. The ends of it are flattened off and joined by a bolt, which had not been cut when the plates reached Dr. Kielhorn. ‘On the ring described, there slides a smaller ring, made of a band of copper, the ends of which are fastened by a rivet which also passes through, and firmly holds, a flat disc of copper about 2^3/8” in diameter. Undoubtedly this disc was made to serve as a seal and to bear some writing, but nothing has been engraved on it¹â€™.

...The plates were intended to record a grant of the Vākāṭaka Mahārāja Pṛithivīshēṇa II, but for some reason the inscription was not completed. The extant portion of it consists of 35 lines inscribed on four sides of the first three plates. The characters are of the box-headed variety of the southern alphabets. They resemble in a general way those of the grants of Pravarasēna II, but are less angular. The only peculiarities that need be noticed here are as follows :− The rare jh occurs as a subscript letter in Ajjhita-, line 31 ; ḍ and d are clearly distinguished; v appears in two forms, rectangular as in –vāsakād-, line 1 and round as in vachanāt, line 35; the jihvāmūlīya occurs in line 30; the visarga is denoted by two hook-shaped lines. The language is Sanskrit, and the text is wholly in prose. As regards orthography, we may note the use of the vowel ṛi for ri as in -pautṛiṇaḥ, line 16, of n for ṇ and vice verse as in kāranya-, line 12 and maṇo-, line 13, and of the guttural and dental nasals for the anusvāra in vaṅṡa- in lines 8, 24 etc. and ansa in line 6.

... As stated before, the plates were intended to be issued by the Vākāṭaka Mahārāja Pṛithivīshēṇa II. His genealogy up to Pravarasēna II occurs as in the latter’s Jāmb plates, with the omission, evidently through inadvertence of the writer², of a long expression in line 10. Of Pravarasēna II the present grant gives the additional description which is noticed only in his Siwanī grant that he followed the path laid down by his predecessors and that by his good policy, strength and valour he exterminated all his enemies. Pravarasēna II’s son was Narēndrasēna, who is said to have taken away the family’s fortune by means of confidence
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¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. IX, p. 267.
² Jayaswal tried to make much capital out of this mistake and thought that Rudrasēna I was described here as a Bhāraśiva Mahārāja as he had succeeded as a Bharaśiva dauhitra. See his History of India, etc., p. 32. He does not, however, explain why this description occurs only in such a late grant.