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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
VOLUME XII.
No. 1.-RAGOLU PLATES OF SAKTIVARMAN. BY PROFESSOR E. HULTZSCH; PH.D.; HALLE (SAALE).
This inscription is engraved on four copper-plates measuring about 5 inches in breadth and about 2 inches in height. The two outermost plates are inscribed only on their inner side, but the two middle ones on both sides. The plates were discovered while ploughing at Ragōlu near Chicacole in the Ganjam district. They were rescued by their present owner, Mr. G. Ramadas, B.A., Teacher, Mrs. A. V. N. College at Vizagapatam, when they were about to be melted down into copper. As the inscription is so much damaged that perfect impressions are difficult to obtain, my late lamented friend Rai Bahadur V. Venkayya1 sent me the original plates about which he added the following remarks:
"Each plate has a ring-hole on its left side about inch from the left margin. There was no ring or seal when the plates were brought to me originally. But when they were sent to me a second time, they were accompanied by an oval seal (1 inch by 1 inch nearly) soldered on a broken ring. The seal bears two lines of writing (in the alphabet of the plates), of which the second may be Sak[t]i-varmma [nah ?]."
I may add that the beginning of the first line shows traces of the letters mahārā. Consequently the complete legend of the seal may have been :
1 महाराजस्य श्री
2 शक्तियमणः
The alphabet is of an early Southern type and the language Sanskrit prose (with three verses quoted near the end of the inscription). The sandhi rules are, with two exceptions, carefully observed.
The names of the king and of his family are so much damaged on the plates that they cannot be read with absolute certainty. The former is probably Sakti varman (1. 8), as read on the
1 His covering letter of the 25th September 1912 is the last communication received from him and will be treasured up as such. 2-vriddhayo â, 1. 6, and dattaḥ a-, 1.9.
B
