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No. 59--MADANAPADA PLATE OF VISVARUPASENA
(2. Plates..) D. C. SIRCAR, QOTACAMUND
(Received on 30.3.1959)
The inscription was first published by N. N. Vasu in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LXV, 1896, Part I, pp. 6-15 and Plates. He recorded its discovery as follows: "In the village of Madanapada, Post Office Piñjari, Pargana Kotalipada of the Faridpur District, a peasant whilst digging his field found a copper plate and made it over to the land-holder who kept it in his house. This plate was made over to me by Pandita Lakshmi Chandra Sankhyatirtha in 1892." The inscription was subsequently acquired by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, though later it could not be traced in the Society's collection. N. G. Majumdar re-edited the inscription in his Inscrip tions of Bengal, Vol. III, 1929, pp. 133-39; from the facsimile published by Vasu, which was, however, not quite satisfactory and reliable. Neither Vasu nor Majumdar could read and interpret the grant portion of the record correctly and the latter remarked, "This portion of the text being extremely corrupt and full of scribal mistakes, it is difficult to say what is actually intended."
In 1952, I had an opportunity of examining the plate in the Dacca Museum where it is now preserved and was also allowed by the authorities of the Museum to take impressions of the inscription. On an examination of the epigraph, it was found that the said grant portion of the charter is fairly free from scribal errors while its meaning is quite clear. Consequently I published my reading and interpretation of parts of the record in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Letters, Vol. XX, 1954, pp. 209-17 and Plates. Since the inscription throws considerable new light on the history of the Sēnas of Bengal, some of the readers of my paper have requested me to re-edit the Madanapaḍā plate in the Epigraphia Indica with a full-size illustration.
The inscription is engraved on both sides of a single plate measuring 12 inches in length and 10 inches in height. The Sena seal representing the god Sadasiva is affixed at the top of the plate and it is referred to as the Sadasiva-mudrā in line 50 of the inscription. As regrads palaeography and orthography, the inscription closely resembles other Bengal epigraphs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and nothing calls for remarks in these respects. The language of the record is Sanskrit and it is written in both prose and verse. After the Siddham symbol followed by the mangala O nam5 Nārāyaṇāya at the beginning, there are 20 stanzas in lines 1-31. All these verses are also found in the Idilpur plates often ascribed to Kesavasena who is supposed to have been a brother of Viśvarupasēna. The Idilpur plate, however, contains four additional stanzas which are also found in the Vangiya Sahitya Parishad plate of Viśvarüpasēna. The versified introduction referred to above is followed by the grant portion in prose in lines 31-53. Then come seven of the usual imprecatory and benedictory stanzas and a verse mentioning the dula in lines 53-59. Lines 59-60 contain certain endorsements in prose and the date of the charter in the regnal year 14.
The most interesting feature of the inscription is that a large number of passages in it are re-engraved on erasures. As will be seen from our discussion below and the notes on the text of the inscription, the original donor of the charter was another king of the Sena family, whose name was erased to re-engrave the name Viśvarupa at a later date.
1 Op. cit., p. 6.
Op. cit., p. 138, note 4.
See N. G. Majumdar, op. cit., pp. 118 ff.
Ibid., pp, 140 ff, and Plates.
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