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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XIV.
No. 23.-THE BANGARH GRANT OF MAHI-PALA I: THE 9TH YEAR.
BY R. D. BANERJI, M.A., INDIAN MUSEUM, CALCUTTA. This grant was discovered among some ruins called Ban Raja's garh or Bangarh, in the Dinajpur District of the Presidency of Bengal, during the latter decades of the 19th century. It was kept for some time in the office of Baba Nrisimha Charana Nandi, Zamindär of Nawābbāzār in the same district. In 1886 Mr. Girid hari Basu sent several rubbings of this inscription to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. These rubbings were examined by the late Raja Rājëndra Lala Mitra, who pronounced the find to be an important one, but was prevented by his failing eyesight from attempting a decipherment. The rubbings were then sent by Dr. A. F. R. Hoernle to the late Dr. F. Kielhorn, who published his reading of this important record in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1892. The subsequent history of the plate cannot be definitely traced. It appears to have been sent to the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad by the late Mr. Nanda Krishna Basu, C.S., then Collector of Dinajpur. In the Bengali year 1305 (1898 A.D.) Baba Nagendra Nätha Vasu Prachya-vidya-mahārnava Siddhānta-vāridhi re-edited the record in the Journal of the Bangiya-sähitya-parishad.
The new edition of the text was in no way an improved one, but on the contrary was disfigured by mistakes, though the author had the original plate before him. A fresh edition of the record, accompanied by a translation, was published in 1912 by Mr. Akshayaka mára Maitreya in a book entitled Gauda-lēkha-māla, in which the author collected all published records of the Pala kings of Bengal. Though Mr. Maitrēya's translation is an excellent one, yet bis version of the text was no improvement. It was a very careless copy of the text published by the late Dr. Kielhorn. The corrections made by Mr. Maitreya are conjectural in the majority of cases, and he has taken Dr. Kielhorn's cautious version of ill-preserved portions of the record to be the only version possible. In the winter of 1911-12, when the authorities of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad exhibited their collection of antiquities and literary relics, this grant was went on loan to that exhibition by Babu Någēndra Natha Vasu, who is the present owner of the plate. I obtained a loan of it from the same gentleman, and the now accompanying ink-impressions were prepared by Munshi Wāhid-ud-din Ahmad of the Archæological Section, Indian Museum. On examining the original plate I found that it had never been properly cleaned and in many cases letters were still filled up with earth. The plate was very carefully cleaned before estampages were taken. In the subjoined edition Dr. Kielhorn's version of the text has been improved in some places, the most important of which is the reading of the date. Dr. Kielhorn could not read any part of it, as he had tried to decipher the record from pencil. rubbings which were taken when this part was full of impurities. Bābā Nāgēndra Natha Vagu, instead of cleaning the plate, stated that the numeral of the year and the name of the month had been scratched out. Mr. Maitreys has simply copied this statement without attempting to verify it. After cleaning the plate I found that the portion bearing the date hae suffered from corrosion only, but no one had ever scratched any part of it. The year, month and day are still legible, the numeral for the year having suffered most. The impressions published here are the first of this important record, no one having supplied a fac-simile, when editing it either in English or in Bengali.
Like all other Pala grants, this record also is incised on a single plate of copper, measuring 141" by 12t". It is surmounted by a highly wrought ornament, which was the seal of the Imperial Pālas. It is pointed at the top and bears in the centre a beaded circle with raised
Beng. Ariat. Soc.'s Jl., 1892, pt. 1, p. 77. ? Bangiva-säkitua-parishat-patrika, Vol. V, p. 164.
Gandalökhamala, Vol. 1, p. 99.
