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No. 17.]
THE NALANDA COPPER-PLATE OF DEVAPALADEVA.
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the reading in the other document also, the sense being that as this king furnishes a living example people have to believe in the bistorical reality of the ralers like Prithu, Sagara, eto.
The remaining two words, as is shown by this plate where they occur in line 35 and line 42, respectively, were correctly read by him.
The charter was issued by the devout worshipper of Sugata or Buddha, the Paramēšvara Paramabhattāraka and Mahārājādhiraja, the illustrious Devapäladēva, the son aud successor of Dharmapäla, who is regarded to have been the most powerful of the Pāla kings of Bengal. As I have just stated, its introductory portion is identical with that of the other grant and gives the genealogy of the donor which has already been discussed by scholars. The formal part of the grant, which the inscription registers, is worth considering. The wording is the same as we find in the other document. The officials mentioned are also similar, including the " Pramäti" and the "Sarabhariga ", excepting the Präntapala" who is left out, though the order in which they are named is different. Amongst the names of the countries mentioned in line 35 of the Mungir (Monghyr) plate, this inscription puts Odra in place of Gauda and omits Lata altogether. Herein we are told that Dévapāladeva at the request of the illustrious Balaputredēvs the ruler of Suvarnnadvipa, made through an ambassadoz, granted five villages, four of which lay in the Rajagriha (Rājgir) and one in the Gaya vishaya (district) of the SriNagarabhukti (Patna Division) for the increase of merit and fame of his parents and himself for the sake of income toward the blessed Lord Buddha, for various comforts of the revered bhikshus of the four quarters and for writing the dharma-ratnas or Buddhist texts (i.e. for the three jewels) and for the upkeep of the monastery built at Nalanda at the instance of the said king of Suvarnnadvipa. The endowment, being entirely Buddhist, forms a distinctive feature of the grant and amply justifies the epithet of parama-Saugata applied to the donor. The four villages granted in the Rajagriha vishaya wero .Nandivanäka, Maniväţaka, Naţika and Hastigrāma and the one in the Gayā vishaya was called Palämaka. As is usually the case in such grants, this part of the document ends with the date of the endowment which is the 31st day of Kārtika of the (regnal) year 39 and is written after the orders of the royal donor demanding regalar payment of all the revenues due for the purposes noted above.
The second side of the plate first gives the well-known imprecatory and benedictory verses and, thereafter, introduces Balavarmman who acted as the dataka in this meritorious undertaking' and whom it describes as the overlord of Vyāghratați-mandala, ever ready to fight his foes indepondently.' Evidently he was the official of the King of Magadha entrnsted with all arrangements to be made in connection with the grant. Then the inscription supplies, though unfortunately too meagre, an account of Balapatradēva, the king of Savarnnadvira at whose instance the endowment was made giving, also, some information regarding his ancestry. It is mainly in this connection that this document is specially interesting and possesses considerable international value. We learn that the dynasty to which Bālaputra belonged was that of the gailēndras, who wore Buddhists and held the island of Java under their sway about the eighth century of the Christian era or the Šaka year 700. The latter fact about the Sailendras is already known from the Kalāsan inscription which has been published by Dr. (now Sir) R. G. Bhandarkari and Dr. J. L. A. Brandes. But this Nalanda copper-plate introduces to history for the first time sri-Balaputradēva, the Sailendra King of Suvarnnadvips together with some of his relations, as well as the dutaka (of the grant), namely, Balavarmman.
The illustrious Mahārija Balaputradēva, our inscription tells us, was the overlord of Suy. arnnadvips. His mother was Tārā, the daughter of a King Dharmasētu of the lunar race and
Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XVII, Part II, for 1887, Art. I. The Tydsorift voor de Táál,-Landen Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch India, XXXI (1886), p. 20..
