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No. 24.]
SOME IMAGE INSCRIPTIONS FROM EAST BENGAL.
353
2. THE BĀGHĀURĀ NĀRĀYANA IMAGE INSCRIPTION
This inscription was brought to my notice in 1912, when I went to Tippera to secure the inscription described in the foregoing pages. Ramanath Chakravarty, a former pupil of mine, whom I met in Comilla, gave me to understand that an inscribed image of Vishnu had been discovered in a village near the Sub-divisional town of Brahmanbaria in the Tippera district and that the local people had been able to read the word Mahipāla on the inscription. My curiosity was considerably roused to come across an inscription of the Pāla kings so far east from their native home in north Bengal. Pressure of business, however, did not allow me to go after the insoription at that time, and for the next two years I was too busy elsewhere to think of getting at it. Towards the beginning of the year 1914 a friend of mine, Babu Upendrachandra Guha, B.A., B.T., who is an enthusiast in matters archæological, secured chalked photographs of the inscription and published an article with a reading of it in the local monthly, the Dacca Review. The reading, however, was rather defective, and I gave a more correct reading in the next number of the journal. I also published a correet reading of the inscription in the January number of the J. 4. 8. B., 1915 and pointed out its importance.
The image containing the inscription was dug out of a pond some ten or twelve years ago in the village of Bāghāură near the Sub-divisional town of Brahmanbāriä in the district of Tippera. It is now worshipped by a half-crazy woman in the neighbouring village of Vidyākața. In January 1915 I visited the spot and obtained some excellent photographs of the image ; but no amount of persuasion could prevail upon the woman to part with the image.
The inscription purports to be of the third year of king Mahipala, presumably Mahipala I of the Pāla dynasty of Bengal. It records the installation of the god Nārāyang in Samatata, included in the kingdom of Mahipāla, by a merchant, Lökadatta, son of Vasudatta and hailing from the village of Bilakindaka, in furtherance of the religious merit of himself and parents. Bilakındaka is in all probability the village Bilakēnduāi, situated close to Baghäura.
The importance of the inscription is twofold. First, it definitely settles the position of the kingdom of Samatata. There is no room for doubt now that the village of Bilákënduar must have been inside the kingdom of Samataţa. Now let us recall what Yuan-Chwang sava about Samatata. The pilgrim came to the country of Samatata going 1,200 or 1,300 li south of Kāmarupa. Taking 5 li to 1 mile, 1,200-1,300 li represent about 250 miles. The country of Samatata was about 3,000 li (i.e. 600 miles) in circuit and bordered on the great sea. The land lay low and was regularly cultivated. Now, if we look round for the country which must satisfy all these conditions and at the same time must include the Brahmanbaria Sub. division of the Tippera district, in which the village of Bilakënduki is situated, and if we remember that natural barriers such as mountains and rivers marked off one kingdom from another in those days, we cannot but accept the plain tract of land bounded by the Garo and the Khasi Hills and the hills of Tippera on the north and east, by the Lauhitya, or the old Brahmaputra river, on the west, and by the Bay of Bengal on the south as the ancient kingdoni of Samatata. It is a perfectly natural geographical unit with neatly marked boundaries. comprising the eastern half of the present Mymensingh and Dacca districts lying east of the Brahmaputra, the greater part of Sylhet, and the whole of the Tippera and Noakhali districts. The distances between countries recorded by Yuan-Chwang are, in all reasonable probability, distances between the capital towns; and the distance of 250 miles recorded by Yuan-Chwang between Kāmarupa and Samatata is pretty accurately the distance between Gauhati and Comillal by any modern route. The circuit of 600 miles is also right and the tract, which is a vast plain, borders on the great sea.
II am of opinion that Badkamta, 19 miles west of modern Comilla, was the ancient capital of Samntata. Vide my paper "A forgotten kingdom of East Bengal," J. 4, S. B., March 1914.
