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GRANT OF HARSHAVARDHANA.
XI. -THE MADHUBAN COPPER-PLATE OF HARSHA,
DATED SAMVAT 25.
By G. BÜHLER, Ph.D., LL.D., C.I.E. The subjoined edition of Harsha's lately found grant has been prepared from two paper impressions and an ink print which have been made and furnished to me by Dr. J. Burgess. The plate was discovered in January 1888, by a cultivator whose phoughshare struck against it in a field near Madhuban, a village in pargana Nathapur of tahsil Sagri, thirty-two miles NE. from Azamgarh, in the North-Western Provinces. It was obtained by Dr. A. Führer from the Collector of Azamgarh, and is now in the Lucknow Museum.
The inscription is incised on a single copper-plate measuring 204 inches by 131, and which weighs 81 tbs, but has no ring or seal. The letters are cut neatly and deeply, so that even in those places where the surface has suffered or the plate is uneven, they have not been quite destroyed or blurred, and the reverse of the impressions shows them distinctly. The alphabet is of the Central Indian type which appears on Dr. Bhagvanlal's inscriptions from Nepal, Nos. 3—15, the Kamavana, Jhâlrapatan, Lakkha Mandal and other inscriptions, as well as on the Horiuzi palm-leaves and the Nepalese Cambridge MS. No. 1049. The characters resemble those of the later epigraphic documents named, especially Dr. Bhagvånlal's No. 15, and those of the MSS., more closely than the earlier inscriptions which are known to fall within or immediately after Harsha's reign. Only a few letters, like ka and the subscribed ña, show more ancient forms than the palmleaves. As regards ka, the curve of the left-hand limb does not join with the upward stroke on the left of the central vertical line. The subscribed na has in samdjnápayati (1. 10) the older form, which occurs in the Lakkha Mandal Prasasti, in ráj ñt (1. 12) and djña (1. 15), the form used in the MSS. and Nepal No. 15, differing only slightly in the position. On the other hand a good many signs like tha, sa, ha and the numerals for 20, 5 and 6 show somewhat later or more developed forms than those of the documents quoted. The letter-numerals 5 and 6 resemble exactly the figures of the Cambridge MS. No. 1702, the sign for 20 comes closest to that of the Cambridge MS. No. 1461. Peculiar is a small excrescence on the left-hand of da, caused by the letter having been made with two strokes, the triangular form of the subscribed va, and the slope in the bottom-lines of the letters pa, ma, ya, va, la, sa, and sha, which however is not constant. These latter mostly show acute angles, but occasionally nearly right angles.
The inscription is most important for palæographical purposes, and its careful study may be recommended to those scholars who still believe that the epigraphic documents give a clear view of the gradual development of the Indian alphabets. If this Sasana is compared letter for letter with Dr. Bhagvånlal's No. 15, it will appear that the latter, which was incised 128 years later, shows a number of more archaic forms. If the Madhuban grant had been accessible when I wrote my palæographic essay on the Horiuzi palm-leaves, it would have been much easier to prove that everywhere in India the epigraphic alphabets are in many details retrograde and lag behind the literary ones,
Indian Antiquary, vol. IX, pp. 366 ff; ibid. vol. X, pp. 34 ff; ibid. vol. V, pp. 180 ff; ante, p. 10 ; Anecdota Oxroniensia, vol. I, pt. 8; Bendall's Catalogue of Sans MSS. from Nepal.
* See Bendall's Catalogue, last table. Aneodota Oronieusia, vol. I, pt. 3, pp. 63 ff.
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