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No. 28.]
THE PARIKUD PLATES OF MADHYAMARAJADEVA.
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No. 28.-THE PARIKUD PLATES OF MADHYAMARAJADEVA:
BY R. D. BANERJI, M.A., INDIAN MUSEUM, CALCUTTA.
The plates bearing the subjoined inscription were sent in 1906 to the late Dr. Theodor Bloch, then Superintendent, Archaeological Sarvey, Eastern Circle, by Mr. J. R. Blackwood, I.C.S., Magistrate of the Puri District of Bengal. They were handed over to me by Dr. Bloch in 1908 for decipherment. I finished my article early in 1909 and gave the paper to Dr. Bloch ; but he fell ill after looking through the transcript of the first plate and never recovered sufficiently so as to be able to finish it. The plates were not presented to the Indian Museum and consequently there is no record of them in that office. I had only heard from Dr. Bloch that they had come from Parikud in the Puri District. When I was touring in that district for collecting specimens for the Indian Museum, in September 1910, I learnt from Mr. J. Clarke, I.C.S., the then Magistrate, that the plates belonged to the Raja of Parikud, who had no intention of presenting them to the Maseum. The plates will, accordingly, be sent back to the Rāja after publication. I am obliged to Mr. Clarke for the following information about the plates. The name of the present owner is Sri-Gaurachandra-Mānasinha Harichandana Mardarāja Bhramaravara Rāya, Kāja Bahādur of Pārikud. The Rāja is not able to trace which of his ancestors first secured the plates and from what source they were received, por is he able to state the locality in which they were discovered. The plates used to hu preserved in his record room. Mr. Clarke kindly procured for me the genealogical tree of the Pārikud family, but I find that none of the kings mentioned in the subjoined inscription could be traced in the copy sent to me, though I heard from Mr. Clarke that the Rājas of Pārikud claim to have been descended from the kings mentioned in the copper-plate record.
The inscription is incised on three thin plates of copper, measuring 74" x 41 and hold together by a circular ring of the same metal whose diameter is roughly 3" To this ring was affixed a seal of some other metal, presumably brass (?), of which, however, there remains only a mutilated part and the solid base in which the edges of the ring are fixed. The last of the plates is broken in the right upper corner, while the first shows a slit from the ring-hole to the edge, as in the case of the Buguda plates of Madhavavarman. This record which has been engraved on the second side of the first plate, and on both sides of the other two plates has already appeared in the Vangiya-Sahitya Parishad-Patrika. It refers itself to the reign of Madhyamarājadēva of the Sailodbhava family who ruled in the Köngöda-mandala. The language of the grant is very incorrect Sanskrit and the record has been very carelessly incieed. Donbling of consonants has been avoided, and almost invariably letters are loft out at the ends of words. There is one incorrectly spelt word in the inscription, which is quite unintelligible to me. It is visrake in 1. 49.
The object of the inscription is to record the grant of a village in the Katakabhukti. vishaya to twelve Brāhmanas, vis. Silasvāmi, Govardhanagvāmi, Vandhusvāmi, Kavadisvami Nārāyanagvāmi, Madhavasvāmi, Bharanisvāmi, Durgagvāmi, Aditynetimi, Rudras svimi and Sukhasvāmi.
1 [It may be noted that these plates were sent to the office of the Assistant Archeological Superin fur Epigraphy, Southern Circle, in 1906 by Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar while the latter was the acting Archeological Surveyor of the Bengal Circle. The plates were returned to Mr. Bhandarkar with a set of ink-impressious for publication in the Epigraphia Indica (vide Report on Epigraphy for 1905-6, Appendix A, No. 8). The accompanying photo-lithographic plate is prepared from the impressions supplied by the Assistant Archeological Superintendent's office (Madras). V. V.) * Above, Volume III, p. 41 f.
Volume XVI, p. 193.
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