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No. 16.) VELVIKUDI GRANT OF NEDUNJADAIYAN: THIRD YEAR OF REIGN. 291
No. 16.-VELVIKUDI GRANT OF NEDUNJADAIYAN: THE THIRD YEAR
OF REIGN.
BY H. KRISANA SASTRI, B.A., OOTACAMUND. Sixteen years ago, when Mr. Venkayya in his Epigraphical Report for 1908 (pp. 50 ff) discussed with great ability the contents of the fourth of the early Pandya copper-plates discovered till then, he remarked : " The originals of these plates have not been traced. Tbe following account of them is based on a preliminary study of two excellent impressions belonging probably to Sir Walter Elliot's collections kindly placed at my disposal by Dr. Fleet in 1893." These duplicate impressions of the grant now in the editor's possession, are marked by Dr. Fleet "I-n-11" and must have been originally intended for publication in the Indian Antiquary. Mr. Venkayya, however, could not at once prepare an article on them, as the early Påndya chronology was then obscure. About the end of 1915, Dr. L. D. Barnett of the British Museum, London, sent me impressions of a copper-plate inscription preserved in that institution and wished to know if it had been published and what its contents were. Curiously enough, it happened that these were the very same impressions of which Mr. Venkayya was una ble to trace the originals. I wrote back to Dr. Barnett informing that the plates contained on them an important Påndya grant which had been already noticed in the Epigraphical Report for 1908 and asked for certain details about them. He says briefly: "There is no seal on the grant: the plates are held by a thin copper-ring, which has been cut." The detailed measurement of the plates and their number, consequently, remain to be what has been described by Mr. Venkayya, vis., these are ten copper-plates, of which the first seven are numbered on the left margin on their inner sides and the impressions measure 103" by 3}", the first and the last plates being written only on their inner sides.
The writing on the plates is both in the Granths and Vaţteluttu characters, the first being used in Sanskrit passages (ul. 1 to 30 and 11. 142 to 150) and in all Sanskrit words that occur in the Tamil portion of the inscription. The Grantha characters and orthography do not call for any special remarks except that in almost all conjunct consonants, where they are written one below the other, the upper or the first member of the compound letter is marked by the virāma, following evidently the Tamil method of writing. The same influence is also observed in the pronunciation and spelling of Sanskrit words, e.g., pärakan and purokan (l. 99). kritāpatānan (1. 100) and kandakanishțuran (1. 100 f.). In one particular case, the purely Tamil word antunar (1. 61) is written partly in Grantha and partly in Tamil. The use of tsha for ksha (1. 114), uma for tmu, dma for Ima and ri for fi or ru, in compound letters, also shows the same influence. Consonants coming after r are always doubled except in w in line 14 and far in line 17. The upadhmāniya and jihvāmüliya symbols are used throughout in their proper places. The anusvāra used in-varggańsyudhi (1.14) and in samyati (1.28) is worth noticing. It denotes the anunāsika forms of yu and ya and is shaped in the form of a crescent with a dot in it placed over the heads of these letters. In his commentary on Påņini VIII-4-59 Bhattoji-Dikshita remarks that the anusvāra in such cases changes itself optionally into the nasal form of ya.
The Vatteluttu character so called, is an oblique form of Tamil (excepting certain letters) with a few angularities which on careful scratiny could be easily accounted for. The only four letters in the alphabet whose form cannot be explained with reference to Tamil are the vowel letters i( ) (see irakki® in line 40), ai n ) (see aimpadinuar in line 135) and the more frequently occurring na ( 3 and po ). In the matter of the Vattelutta palæography of this inscription it might be noted (1) that the publi is correctly inserted throughout the inscription except in a few cases, e.g., volti- (1. 31), sttsrattum= (1. 47 f.), arram (ibid.), -avarku (l. 46) and võlci? (1. 37); (2) that it is unnecessarily inserted over the vocalio 6 and 0 and even
