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No. 31.]
BHANDUP PLATES OF CHHITTARAJADEVA.
259
All that reads well: but there are objections. (1) While the account in the Kissah-iSanjān certainly seems to refer to the present Sanjän in the Dåhånd taluka, we are told that the belief that Sanjan was an important place in former times rests on & misunderstanding of statements by the Arab geographers of the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and that their refer. ences to a place called Sindån by them belong, not to Sapján, but to a town in Outch, somewhere near Cambay : this, then, disposes of the idea that Sanjān was formerly a place of special importance. (2) The word trivarga seems to be a well-established term for the three higher Hindā castes, the Brāhmans, Kabatriyas, and Vaibyab : and it is to be noted that it occurs again in a passage of the same general nature in line 48 of the Bhådāna grant of A.D. 997, in which record there is no mention at all of the place Hamyamana, Hanjamana. (3) As regards etymology, the usual change is from s to h, not from h to 8: we might expect to have a form Hanjän from Samjamana, but not Sanjan from Harjamana. And (4) it is not easy to think that Hindū rulers would deem it necessary to address a community of foreigners in respect of donations in which those foreigners were not in any way concerned, and which could not have the slightest interest for them.
More evidence is wanted, to settle this matter in any particular direction. But we are at least not disposed to accept the identification of Hamyamana, Hamjamana, with Sanjān. It looks as if the place was some administrative head-quarters of these Silahāra princes, apart from their actual capital, where their official records and archives were written and kept, and public notifications were issued about any matters likely to be of any general interest.
2. The places mentioned in the Thana plates of A.D. 1017. This record, No. 306 in Professor Kielhorn's List of the Inscriptions of Southern India, ante, vol. 7, appendix, is on three plates wbich were found in 1786 or 1787, along with another set of three plates which cannot be identified, in digging for some new works at the fort at Thāna. It is much wished that these plates could be traced ; ro that critical edition of the record might be published, with a facsimile. As matters stand, for our knowledge of its contents we are dependent on the translation by Ramalochana Pandit, with a partial transcription of the text as far perhaps as the end of the first plate, communicated by General J. Carnac, and published in 1788 in the Asiatic Researches, vol. 1 (fifth edition, 1806), p. 357.
It is a record of the Silabāra prince Arikēsaridēve, whose name is given as Kasidova in the Bhandap plates (see p. 253 above). It is dated in the Pingala samvatsara, Saka 939 expired; on the full-moon of Kärttika ; on the occasion of an eclipse of the moon: and these details answer quite regalarly to 8 November, A.D. 1017, on which day there was an eclipse of the moon, visible in India, the moment of full-moon being at 19 hrs. 22 min. after mean suprise, i.e. at 1 hr. 22 min. after midnight, (for Ujjain).
Just as the record on the Bhändūp plates of A.D. 1026 does in the case of Chhittaraja, 80 this record describes his uncle Arikasarin as ruling "the whole land of the Konkane, comprising many territories acquired by his own arm, and containing fourteen hundred villages headed by Puri" ; the last statement being made with a view to locating in a genera way the grants that were made, by indicating the province.
1 See p. 252 above, note 2, No. 305: the text there is : ....... purapati-tri(tri) vargga-sträna prabiti-pradhawapradhana-jano(na) ....... and Professor Kielhorn rendered it (Epi. Ind., vol. 3 p. 269) by :-"informs ........ heads of towns and the chief and common people of the three (principal) castes, places of abode, ......"
The week-day is apparently not stated.
• Sewell, Eclipses of the Moon in India, table E, p. 28: and compare Profesor Kielhorn's note on the date in Ind. Ant., vol. 28, p. 115, No. 11.
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