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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XVII.
The inscription refers itself to the reign of a king called Dēve-Khadga of the Khadga line of kings, who ruled over Samatatal towards the end of the 7th century A.D. The existence of the Khadga line of kings in east Bengal became known from the discovery in 1884 of two grants of Déva-Khadga, evidently the most powerful monarch of the line. These two plates were finally edited by the late Babu Gangamohan Laskar, M.A., in the Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. I, No. 6.
The inscription records the names of three generations of the Khadgas ;-Khadgodyama, the founder of the line, his son Jata-Khadga and his son Dēva-Khadga. All these names were known from the copper-plate grants of Déva-Khadga referred to above, and it has nothing new to tell as in this respect. It informs us that Prabhāvati, queen of Déva-Khadga, caused the image of Sarvväni to be covered with gold leaves out of reverence for the goddess. The name of Prabhavati also was known previously, as she figures in one of the plates of Déva-Khadga As a donor of land to a Buddhist monastery. The royal family of Samatata seems to have been of a particularly religious turn of mind. Yuan-Chwang states that Sılabhadra, the head of the University of Nalanda, came of the royal stock of Samatata. We can hardly conceive at this distance of time what an exalted position it must have been. As the head of the greatest centre of Buddhist culture of the time, he must have occupied the position of the dictator of the then Buddhist world. It is probable that he was a Khadga, and those who kept alive the name of Khadgas in later times tried in their way to emulate their illustrious predecessor by noble deeds of piety and benevolence. Déva-Khadga was a donor of land to Buddhist monasteries, and his wife and sion also followed in his footateps, as appears from his grants. Yuan-Chwang calls the king of Samatata & devout Buddhist and Déva-Khadga seems very well to merit this appellation The pious soul of queen Prabhávati has once again spoken to posterity through the present discovery.
The image reveals a curious state of religions belief prevalent in those days. Queen Prabhavati and the members of her husband's family were all devont Buddhists; but all the same she did not feel it irreligious in any way to pay reverence to a goddess who must have belonged to the Brahmanical pantheon. Harshavardhana, to whose court Yuan-Chwang came, in a simi. lar manner divided his veneration among the Buddha, the Sun-god and Siva. All these clearly show that we must revise our idea of the Buddhists and Hindus of ancient days as two com munities shut up in watertight compartments. They were more like the present-day Saktas and Vaishnavas than otherwise.
Asrafpur, near the bank of the old and the real Brahmaputra, the find-place of the two plates of Déva-Khadga, and Deulbādi, sixty miles south-east, almost at the foot of the hills of Tippera, the find-place of the present image, mark respectively the western and eastern limits of Samatata, the kingdom of the Khadgas.
The inscribed surface at the base of the image is about 8" in length, and the characters are approximately 1' long. They are bigger in the two extreme sections than in the middle one. They are incised pretty deeply and are in an almost perfect state of preservation.
The characters belong to the Eastern variety of the Gupta script current in Bengal towards the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century A.D. Mr. Laskar, at the time of editing the plates of Déva-Khadga, assigned them to "the 8th or 9th century A.D.", while Mr. R. D. Banerji in his Bengali History of Bengal is, on paleographical grounds inclined to push the date still further forward. I believe, however, that these Khadga inscriptions cannot be taken farther than the beginning of the 8th century A.D. No one, I believe, can
Pide my paper" A forgotten kingdom of East Bengal," I. 4. 8. B. March 1914. · Vide leo Mr. Bagerji's Monograph on "The Palms of Bengal." Memoiro, 4. . B, Vol. V, No. 8. P 67.
