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No. 7.]
DAMODARPUR COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTIONS.
113
No. 7.-THE FIVE DAMODARPUR COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE GUPTA PERIOD.
BY RADHAGOVINDA BASAK, M.A., RAJSHAHI.
These copper-plates were discovered in the village Damodarpur, about 8 miles west of Police Station Phulbari (also a railway station on the Northern Section of the Eastern Bengal Railway) in the District of Dinajpur in the Rajshahi Division of the Presidency of Bengal. The whole set of five plates was found in the month of April 1915 by some coolies employed by one Chhamir-ud-din Mondal in levelling a heap of earth between two tanks, locally known as Haripukur and Kholakuṭipukur, during the making of a road. The plates were made over in due course to J. A. Ezechiel, Esq., I.C.S., the District Magistrate of Dinajpur, who very kindly sent them to the Director of the Varendra Research Society, Rajshahi. The Society then placed them in my hands for decipherment of the inscriptions. Ill-health has hitherto prevented me from editing these inscriptions properly, although I was most anxious to publish my reading of the texts as soon as possible, to enable scholars to renew a discussion of, and an investigation into, the old, but interesting, subject of Gupta chronology and other important historical data for the history of the Gupta period. When the plates reached my hands, they were covered with a thick coating of rust, which remained stuck to them and overlay the letters of the inscriptions in many places. They were therefore kept immersed for some days in tamarind and were then cleansed with dilute nitric acid. This having been done, the letters became quite legible in some places and partly so in others. The extremely corroded and damaged condition of the plates, especially of Nos. 2 and 4, has caused me a good deal of difficulty in the work of decipherment. The plates are now deposited in the Museum of the Varendra Research Society along with several other similar historical relics-the most important and earliest amongst them being the Dhanaidaha copper-plate grant of Kumara-gupta I. I shall feel very grateful to any scholar who points out any mistakes that I may have committed either in making out the text or in interpreting it.
In order easily and clearly to understand the texts of these inscriptions, a few words are required at the outset concerning the nature and form of the documents. The plates are not like ordinary royal grants of land made to Brahmaņas or dedicated to gods, nor are they like prasastis (eulogies) or Brahma deya records. They may rather be considered as a peculiar kind of sale-deeds, recording, as it were, the state confirmation of land-sale transacted between Government and the purchasers, who buy land on payment of prices at the usual rate prevailing in different localities. These purchases of land were generally made with a view to free donation thereof to temples or to Brahmanas. The sale rate was calculated. in coins (in gold dinaras in these cases). It is not unlikely that the deeds were first drawn up in the Government office and thon engraved on copper and afterwards issued to the persons concerned. Three out of the four copper-plate grants from East Bengal edited by Mr. Pargiter, viz. the grants marked A, B and C published in the Indian Antiquary, July 1910, seem to be records of a similar type. These sale-deeds may be regarded as having in the form in which they are drawn up roughly six different parts. The first part contains the prayer of the applicant, and therein is also mentioned the name of the ruler of the particular province in which the land to be purchased is situated. The special object for which the purchase is to be made by the applicant is stated in the second part, which also refers to the prevailing custom of buying fallow lands on payment of money at a particular rate for a parti cular area. The third part contains reference to the Government record-keepers, whose approval was necessary in determining the sale. The fourth part embodies the permission of the State for selling the land on receipt of the proper price, after it has been severed from other lands by boundary marks, on survey made according to a particular standard of
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