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No. 35.]
KUDOPALI PLATES OF MAHA-BHAVAGUPTA II.
255
These are three copper-platos, each of which measures about 7" long by 4" broad. They are held together by a ring, which had not been ont when the plates reached Dr. Haltzsch. The ring is about thick and sy in diameter. Its ends are soldered into a deal which bears in high relief a sitting hansa, facing the proper left and surmounted by a crescent, and, below the hamsa, the legend Ránaka-fri-[Pu]mn[ja]. The weight of the plates is 2 lbs. 4 oz., and of the ring and seal 84 oz.; total 2 lbs. 13 oz. The inscription begins on the second side of the first plate and ends on the first side of the third plate; but at the top of the first side of the first plate there is the following additional line of writing, which I do not understand, n characters that closely resemble those of the inscription itself :
Péntf(pamhåldtalikatamvôlabhólichhatrasatau ll Though the edges of the plates are only slightly raised into rims, the writing throughout is in an excellent state of preservation. The size of the letters is between 1" and " The characters, which include decimal figures for 1 and 3 in line 7, are Nagari, of the northern class. In general, they are similar to those of the inscriptions published above, Vol. III. p. 340 ff., but owing, as it seems to me, to the more cursive style of the writing, they present a rather more modern appearance. The sign of avagraha does not occur. The virama also, in consequence of the absence of final consonants which will be accounted for below, is nowhere employed; and the sign of visarga is used only six times, three times correctly and three times superfluously. The anusvára is expressed seven times in the ordinary way, by a superscript circle or dot, and fourteen times by a circle with a nearly vertical line beneath it, written after the akshara to which the anusvára belongs. The only final form of a consonant which occurs is that of m, in -arttham in line 18. Of individual letters, the initial i is exprossed by two circles with (below them) a line drawn downwards either from right to left (in -addhydi, 1. 16), or from left to right (in itin, 1. 33); or by a wavy line drawn downwards from right to left, with two circles below it, and below these a slightly curved line drawn downwards from right to left (in Lôisara, 1. 10, and sdan, 1. 35). The initial d, which occurs only in pivarddhaé (for vivriddhaye) in line 18, is expressed by a vertical line with on the left of it) a semicircle open to the left. This form of é, which is very similar to the letter é used in the Cambridge MS. Add. 1691, II.,' is of essentially the same type as that spoken of by Dr. Fleet, above, Vol. III. p. 332. It occurs, in varying shapes, in a number of inscriptions from eastern India that have all been written some time after the beginning of the 11th century A.D. We find it, e.g., in the word éva in line 14 of the Nadagam plates of Vajrahasta of Sa ka-Samvat 979 (above, p. 189, Plate), in the word ékaikéna in line 17 of the Deopara inscription of Vijayasena (Ep. Ind. Vol. I. p. 309, Plate), in the word étasya in line 2 of the Kamauli plates of Vaidyaddva of Kamarupa (ibid. Vol. II. p. 350, Plate), in the word étabhyan in line 24 of the Bakergañj plate of Keśavasêna (Jour. Beng. As. Soc. Vol. VII. p. 44, Plate xlv.), in the word dva (not ésha) in line 9 of the Gaya inscription of Purushottamasimha (Ind. Ant. Vol. X. p. 342, Plate), in the word @shaḥ in line 10 of the Sylhet plates of Késavaddva (Proceedings, Beng. As. Soc. 1880, Plate iv.), and in the word étasya in line 24 of the Sylhet plates of Igånadeva (ibid. Plate vii. line 8). And, to mention some inscriptions of which no facsimiles have yet been published, it is also used in the Sarnath inscription of Mahipala of Vikrama-Samvat 1083 (Ind. Ant. Vol. XIV. p. 140), in the Govindpar inscription of the poet Gangadhara of Saka-Samvat 1059 (Ep. Ind. Vol. II. p. 333), in the Assam plates of Vallabhadeva of Saka-Samvat 1107 (Zeitschr. D. Morg. Ges. Vol. XL. p. 43), and in the Gaya inscription of Yakshapala (Ind. Ant. Vol. XVI. p. 64). The particular
This sign may be the remnant of a final form of ; but as it is often used before sibilants, there can be no doubt that the writer considered it as an optional form of anurodra, not as a form of the letter m.
This form of i, consisting of two circles with (below them) a line drawn downwards from left to right, is occa sionally used in the KbAlimpur plate of Dharmapala ; see above, p. 244.
See Prof. Bendall. Catalogwe, Table of letters. From that Table it will be seen that the form of &, spoken of above, in the manuscripte hus taken the place of the triangular form of from about the middle of the 12th century A.D.
