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MADHUBAN PLATE OF HARSHA.
155.
(V. 12.) His (i.e. Râma's) son was he who bore the name of Kusa. Having obtained the touch of the hand of this king, that Kumndvati, who had emerged from the tank, expanding her body, enjoyed pleasures for a very long time.
(Line 19.) Now, this king Tammusiddhi, the heroic offspring of the glorious Gandagôpåla and Sridevi, the younger brother of the great king Manmasiddhi, having performed his anointment to universal sovereignty in the town of Nellûr, while protecting the whole (earth) girt with the oceans,
(V. 28.) Presented, in the Saka year (denoted by the chronogram) Sarayogya (1.e. 1127), the village called Muttiyampakka, ... the head-quarters of Panţarashtra, to this god, the lord of Hastisaila, whose wealth is increasing.
No. 22.- MADHUBAN PLATE OF HARSHA;
THE YEAR 25. BY F. KIELHORN, PH.D., D. Litt., LL.D., C.L.E.; GÖTTINGEN. This plate was discovered, in January 1888, in a field near the village of Madhuban in the pargapa Nathûpûr of the tahsil Sagrî, in the Azamgarh district of the Benares division of the United Provinces, and is now in the Provincial Museum of Lucknow. The inscription which it contains has been already edited, by the late Professor Bühler, in Ep. Ind. Vol. I. p. 67 ff. As it is desirable to issue & facsimile of the plate, I re-edit the inscription from impressions that were furnished to Dr. Hultzsch by the late Mr. E. W. Smith.
This is a single copper-plate, about 1' 8" broad by 1' " high, and inscribed on one side only. Judging from the impressions, & seal was soldered on to the middle of the proper right side of the plate, just as is the case with the Bangkhêra plate of Harsha and the three plates of the Maharajas of Mahôdaya, but it must have got detached from the plates and has not been discovered. In the upper part and on the proper left side the plate has suffered somewhat from corrosion, but the writing throughout is so deeply engraved that on the back of the impressions every letter of the 18 lines which the plate contains may be read with absolute certainty. The size of the letters is about ". The characters belong to the north-western class of alphabets ; in general, they closely resemble those given (from the Lakkha Mandal inscription, North. Inscr. No. 600) in columns xv. and xvi. of Table IV. of Professor Bühler's Ind. Palæographie. Of initial vowels the text only contains a (e.g. in anayôrs, 1. 15); i (e.g. in iva, 1. 6), the form of which, employed here, in Professor Bühler's Table occurs only in much later inscriptions; u in
• 1 The words used of Kumudratt are selected with reference to the original meaning of that name. Kumud vatt is likened to a group of lotuses (lewmwdwarf) growing in a pond (garasal praridad), which open their blossoms (vikaroar-dingt) when touched by the beams (kara-pariam avdpya) of the moon. The marriage of Kuis and Kumudrati, the sister of the serpent Kumuda, is told in the sixteenth sarga of the Raghwania.
According to Dr. Führer, Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions in the N..w. Provinces and Oudh, P. 189, where the above information is given, the village of Madhuban is 82 miles north-east of Azamgarh ; but I have not found the name in the Indian Atlas, sheet No. 108.
Some of the errors which Prof. Bühler's text contains were corrected by him, when editing the Banskhera plate of Harsha, above, Vol. IV. p. 208.
• See above, Vol. IV. p. 208, and Vol. V. p. 208.
Compare the sonpat seal of Harshavardhana, Gupta Istor. p. 281, and Plate.
• The apparently more antique manner in which essentially the same alphabet was written in Eastern India may be seen from the plates of the time of SasinkarAja (above, Vol. VI. p. 14, Plate) which are only about ten years older than this Madhuban plate.
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