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256
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XV.
thickness; but the letters, being deep, show through at places on the backs of them. The engraving is well executed. Each of the plates has two holes bored into it. A circular ring of copper passiug through one pair of them serves to hold the plates together at one end : throngh the corresponding pair of holes at the other end passes a bent rod of copper, the ends of which are secured in an oval seal of the usual Valabhi type. The latter measures 13" long by 1}" broad, and bears the name of the founder of the dynasty. The exact reading of the legend is uncertain, as the surface of the seal is corroded. Above the legend is figured in high relief on a countersunk surface the humped bull facing the proper right which was the emblem of the Maitrakas. The aggregate weight of the plates and the scal is 126 tolas. The first plate contains thirteon, and the second fifteen, lines of writing, of which the concluding two lines briefly give the date.
From the foregoing description of the plates, as well as from the facsimiles of them appearing with this article, it will be evident to the reader that this Valabhi record does not differ in any salient point from any of the large number of grants of the same dynasty that hare in recent year's come to light. The accompanying transcript of the text will further show that it is almost identical with the Pāliţāņā plates of Dhruvasõna, issued in the same year and edited by Dr. Sten Konow in a former issue of this periodical, differing from them only in the portion dealing with the grant proper. It will, therefore, be unnecessary to go into a minute description of the characters, language and orthography of these plates; for that would be but a repetition of the observations on these topics in the edition of the last-named grant. It will soffice to note that the alphabet offers a specimen each of the jihvimūliya (1. 11), spadhmaniya (1. 14), final 1 (1. 24), and final m (1. 25). The name of the founder of the dynasty is spelt as Bhattakka in 1. 3. The sporadic use of the anusvāra before an uncombined nasal, which is characteristic of the orthography of Kikkaka, may be observed also in these plates, as, for instance, in edin-avizātha- (1. 4), orttka(in) m=uda' (1. 18). Worthy of note is the use of panchāśā (fifty') in line 14, of wbich the final visarga is dropped before the following soft surd. The word is evidently a corruption of the Sanskrit panchasat, formed by dropping the final consonant according to Prakrit usage, and declined as an ordinary thematic stem panchāśa.
The inscription is one of the Mahāsāmanta Maharaja Dhruvasēna [1.], of the family of the kings of Valabhi ; and the charter recorded in it is issued from the city of Valabhi, commonly identified with the modern Vala in Kathiāvād. The object of the inscription is to record the grant by Dhruvasēna to a Brāhmaṇa named Naņņa, a resident of Valā-padra, for the maintenance of sacrificial rites, of certain lands at the village of Chhēdaka-padraka in Hastavapra-aharani. Beside Hastavapra, which is the modern Hathab, none of the place-names can be identified. The date of the record (given in numerical symbols) is the year two hundred and ten, (which, referred to the Valabhi era, yields A.D. 529), and the thirteenth lunar day of the bright fortnight of Śrāvana.
TEXT.2 First Plate.
11 ........... AFIHTAMAETANTËTax gustofaa
खानायुक्त कविनि
1 Above, Vol. XI, pp. 109 ff.
? From the original plates. Up to this point the text is practically identical with the text of the PAlitana plate of Dhruvasena I. (dated samvat 210), published above, Vol. XI, pp. 109 ff. The ouly varie lectiones (excepting such are mistakes of orthography) are the following :-in 1.1 the present grant omits Om before svasti; in 1, 3 it reads Bhattakkas. for Bhafakkah (1.3); 1. 5 pada-pranāma. for-pad-abhipranāma- (1.6).
