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276
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[Vou. XI.
No. 27.-TIWARKHED PLATES OF THE RASHTRAKUTA NANNARAJA; SAKA 553.
BY RAI BAHADUR HIMLAL, B.A. Tiwarkhod is a small village on the south bank of the Ambhora-nadi, in the Multāi tahsil of the Betül District in the Central Provinces. It is 14 miles south of the Multāl town which is 29 miles south-east of Badnür, the head-quarters of Betul District. The village has no ancient remains except a mud fort built as a protection from the Pipdari free-booters during the declining period of the Nagpur Bhonslā rulers. This gashi, as it is called, is now dug up in several places, and the site occupied by the villagers. Within its premises Nandgiri Gosain, a resident of Tiwarkhod, built a new house about 40 years ago. While digging for the foundations he came upon a set of copper-plates, but not knowing what they were, he stowed them away in his lumber room, where they continned to ed y the same obscurity as they had done underground, until Mr. Balwant Singh, Sub-Inspector of Police, Multai Station house, visited the village in the beginning of the year 1910, when Bapú Gosain (son of Nandgiri now dead) observing that the plates contained some curious writing presented them to him for decipherment. Mr. Balwant Singh treated the plates with Ditric acid to remove the accretions of centuries and then kindly forwarded them to me. It is & somewhat curious coincidence that the Multai plates referring to the same line of kings were also found in the custody of a Gosain.
Our plates are two in number, each measuring ot" x 3". They are substantial, being 1" thick. Each plate is inscribed on one side only, the inscribed surface giving an appearance of a depression owing to the edges having been made slightly thicker. The writing is in an excellent state of preservation except that the left top corner of the first plate and the left bottom corner of the second one are a little bit corroded; still the lettering is pretty clear. The ring which was uncut when it reached my hands has a seal on a flattened out surface. It is oval in shape and bears the stamp of a figure which is now indistinguishable, but the legend fri-Yuddhisura underneath, is fairly distinct. The record contains 16 lines, each plate bearing 8 lines. Under the eighth line the word svahastēna is inscribed, but this word occurs in its proper place in line 11. On the margin of the second plate there appear to be 3 figures and 2 letters (probably after-additions) engraved one under the other, which I read as 553 shara, meaning apparently the year 553.'
The characters of the record belong to the northern class of alphabets. The engraving is well done throughout. The average size of letters is about " The orthographical peculiarities worth notice are :-(1) the doubling of the letter with a rēpha on, as in vistirnne (1. 1 f.); but this is not uniform as in -Durgaraja (1. 2) ga has not been doubled ; (2) the two different ways in which the vowel sign of ē has been expressed as in Rāshtrakūļānvayê (1. 1 f.) of which the ē of ye is formed by attaching the sign to the letter instead of superscribing it as in grāmē (1.9); (3) the letter t has been doubled before r in sagottrāya (1. 6) and puttraya (1. 7) and dh before y in Mäddhyandina., 1.7; (4) the sign of a attached to the letters j and t is represented by an upward stroke, instead of a downward one, as in jā of Durgarāja (1. 2) and in tā of Mundibhattāya (1. 7); (5) 6 is not distinguished from v as in-trahmanya (1. 5). Final form of t occurs in line 2.
The language is Sanskrit, but the record seems to have been composed by a clerk who did not properly remember the slökas in praise of the dynasty mentioned in the plates. He therefore introduced prose, maintaining the sense, if not the original wording which, if correctly pat in, would have tarued the first 6 lines into verse. At present, they are a mixture of verse and prose.
1 See Indian Antiquary, Vol. XVIII. p. 230, et seq. * This word seems to have some connection with the Hindi word sala year,' unless it is a mistake for Saka.
[As will be seen from the accompanying photo.-lithograph the first two figures look very much like the English numeral 5. Shara is probably meant for Shāks.-Y. V.]
