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No. 31.]
few places a rather faint superscript or an anusvära, discernible on the original plates, has failed to appear in the lithograph. The plates are strung on a ring about " thick and 24" in diameter which passes through holes in them. The ring has not been cut. The ends of it are secured by the back part of a seal which is circular, about 21" in diameter. The face of the seal is surrounded by a beaded edge, and bears, in high relief, a representation of Garuda, the device on the banner of the Silaharas (see line 18 of the text), shown as a man with an eagle's beak, squatting and facing full-front, with his hands joined palm to palm and held up before his chest, and with somewhat imaginative wings projecting from behind his shoulders: his head is surmounted by a tiara, and has a halo behind it. There is no legend on the seal. The weight of the three plates
Scale '80.
with the ring and seal is closely about 5 lbs. 4 oz.
BHANDUP PLATES OF CHHITTARAJADEVA.
251
The characters are Nagari, of the usual Western India type of the eleventh century, well and uniformly formed. The average size of them is a little less than ". The interiors of the letters show, as usual, marks of working the engraver's tool. The plates are substantial; and so the letters, though reasonably deep, do not show through on the backs of the first and last plates. The characters include a form of the rather rare jh in Jhamjha, line 8, and jhampi, line 18. The forms of dh and v are very similar; and so also are those of ch and v, p and y, and and s. The b is always denoted by ; but the cases are few: I have not thought it necessary to mark them by correcting the text. The vowel ē, attached to a consonant, is made sometimes above the consonant, as in labhate, line 1, sometimes on the left of it, according to the earlier practice, as in kētu, line 3: a similar remark applies to this stroke as part of 3; contrast Sivo and kal-opama, line 2. In line 34 we have forms of the decimal figures 1, 4, 5, 8, and 9: the 8, which somewhat resembles an inverted 4, is peculiar. The verses are punctuated with single and double marks of punctuation: this use of the single mark is rather exceptional for that time.-The language is Sanskrit, sufficiently accurate all through. The introductory part, as far as line 16, is given in eleven verses; and in the subsequent part, in lines 27, 30, 47-50, and 54, there are some of the standard verses on the subject of the merit of making grants, the sin of confiscating them, etc. Verse 1 uses the word yaka, for ya,' who,' for the sake of a rather feeble pun on the name Gananayaka, i.e. Ganapati. In line 18 we have the word jhampin, which is given in Monier-Williams' Sanskrit Dictionary as meaning a leaper, an ape,' from jhampa, a jump': it is used here in the sense of 'one who excels.'
6
1 The expression here is tyaga-jagaj-jhampin. It occurs in other inscriptions, too, if I remember aright. But there are also variations:
(1) tyāga-jagaj-jhampa-jhampaḍ-acharyya, in line 61 of the Khārōpatan Silahāra plates of A.D. 1095,
Ind. Ant., vol. 9, p. 33. For jhampada, of which the jhampala and jhampana which we have below seem to be variants, Monier-Williams gives the meaning (in music) a kind of measure': this makes it equivalent to jhampa-tala, which also means a kind of cymbal.'
In records of the Kadambas of Goa from the Kanarese country, we have the following, which I check and revise from ink-impressions:
(2) tyaga-jaga-jhampa-jhampal-acharyya; in the Gōlihalli inscription, JBBRAS, vol. 9, p. 296, line 11. (3) tyaga-jaga-jhampa-jhampan-acharyya; in the Siddapur inscription, Ind. Ant., vol. 11, p. 273, line 11. (4) tyaga-jhaga-jhampan-acharyya; in the Kittür inscription, JBBRAS, vol. 9, p. 304, line 8. Here, there is a temptation to regard jhaga as a mistake for jaga-jhampa; but it may be taken quite well as the word jhaga itself, which Kittel gives as meaning 'glittering, shining; notoriety, greatness,' and which is evidently connected with Monier-Williams' jhaga-jhagaya, to sparkle, flash.'
2 x 2
