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No. 14.)
PLATES OF THE TIME OF SASANKARAJA.
143
No. 14.-PLATES OF THE TIME OF SASANKARAJA;
GUPTA-SAMVAT 300.
By E. HULTZSCH, PH.D. These plates were received in February 1900 from Mr. H. D. Taylor, I.O.S., Acting Collector of Gañjam, in whose office they had been lying unclaimed. It is not known where they come from. They will be deposited in the Madras Museum.
These are three copper-plates, the first of which bears writing on one side only, and the other two on both sides. But the second side of the third plate is so much worn that I have not been able to read the whole of it. The plates measure 51" in breadth and 21" in height. Their edges are slightly raised into rims for the protection of the writing. On the left side of each plate a hole is bored for passing through a ring, which is 31' in diameter and about *" thick, and which was cut by Mr. Venkayya on receipt of the plates. The ends of the ring are secured in the base of an elliptical seal, wbich measures 1" by 19". In the depression of the seal are, in relief, a couchant bull facing the proper right, a vertical line across the breadth of the seal, and at the bottom the legend Sri-Sainyabhitas[y]a.
The alphabet is the acute-angled type with nail-heade,' which forms the transition from the Gupta to the Nagari alphabet. Two signs of interpunctuation are used, viz. a single horizontal line (11. 1, 24, 27) which corresponds to the single vertical line of other records, and the usual double vertical line.- As regards orthography, I would note that the upadhmaniya occurs twice (11. 5 and 17) and that b is throughout represented by the sign for u. In sarihara (1.16) the guttural nasal stands for the anusvára; in nri(tri)bhuvana (1.17) the vowel si takes the place of the syllable ri; and in sanhấta (1. 5) h is an error for gh. The group ddy is simplified into dy in udyotita (1. 15), while t is doubled before r in fatattrayé (1.2), matapittróh (. 21) and gôttra (1. 22). The anusvára is generally changed into the corresponding, nasal before oonsonants of the five first classes. Two cases of wrong sandhs are paradatta m=vd (1. 27) and
dát-maharajao (1. 8). The language of the inscription is Sanskrit. The bulk of it is in proge; lines 24 to 29 contain four imprecatory verses; and after them there seems to have been a fifth verse of which I can read only the last word (1. 31). The Sanskrit of the prose portion is not very correct. Thus in line 8 f. the words priya-tanayo maharaja(ja)-Yafobhitah ought to stand in the genitive case and the following pronoun tasya ought to be omitted ; in line 11 foar words have to be transposed; line 16 contains a compound in which two superfluous synonyms are included; and in line 21 f. we find arddhana and 'purassarona for arthé and purassaram.
The inscription is dated in the Gaupta year three hundred (1.8), 1.e. in GuptaSamyat 300 = A.D. 619-20, and during the reign of the Maharajadhiraja Sasankardja (1. 3). This king is probably identical with Sasanka, the king of Karnasuvarna, who, according to Hinen Tsiang, murdered Rajyavardhana, the elder brother and predecessor of the great king Harsha of Thânêsar. In Båņa's Harshaoharita the slaying of Rajyavardhana is attributed to the king of Gauds who, according to one manuscript of the Sriharshacharita, was called Narendragupta, but who, according to the commentator on the Harshacharita, was named Sasanka. The translators of the Harshacharita very ingeniously find an allusion to king Saskóka in the word dabasla-mandalam. If the Sasanks of the Si-yu-ki and of the Harshacharita is
1 See Professor Bübler's Indische Palaographie, $ 23. Benl's Buddhist Records of the Western World, Vol. I. p. 210. Ep. Ind. Vol. I. p. 70.
Bombay 1892, p. 195. Ibid. p. 199, and Cowell and Thomas' translation, p. I-and p. 275.
