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No. 24 ]
SOME IMAGE INSCRIPTIONS FROM EAST BENGAL.
361
Note on the reading. The decipherment of this short inscription presents some very serious difficulties. The fourth letter in what I have read as Maladetta is very curious. It bears little resemblance to any letter or compound used in the inscriptions of the time. Mr. Banerji has read it as Maladei; but certainly tta it is not like any i hitherto met with in the inscriptions of the period. It has moreover no perpendicular straight stroke to the proper left, distinctive of an i of the period. The following additional objections to the reading may be advanced :
(i) Maladei must be a Praksit form of Mäla-dēvi, and it is not easy to understand why a Prakrit word should be used in a Sanskrit inscription.
(ii) The use of only the mother's name to denote parentage is unusual in a North Indian inscription.
The letter that one would expect here is ta, reading the name as Maladeva; but the letter used does not bear the slightest resemblance to the va of the period or any of the va's used in this inscription. Then what is this letter? My reading of the letter as tta is only conjec. tural, based on the principle of greatest resemblance and possibility and on a surmise which I shall advance presently. [Perhaps we should read Mäla-khadga.-Ed.]
The second difficulty is about the reading of the name of the donor. Mr. Banerji has read it as Damödröna; but ê is clearly absent from dra. We can read it at best Damodrana, which is inadmissible. I have read it Damodarēna, which is admittedly the correct form of the word. It should be noted that the a mark of na, the letter below dra, is projected upwards to considerable distance. I believe the engraver wrote Dämodana through mistake and attempted to put in re between da and nd. Want of space stood in his way, and he fared very ill. The projection of a of nā should, in my opinion, be taken for the engraver's attempt to make a small ra, and the r mark of Dāmödra should be taken as the a he tried to make. I have this read Të betweel da and nā.
The next difficult word is what I have read as tad-bhrādakand. Mr. Banerji read it as tabhrādakana, which gives no meaning whatever, and which moreover is incorrect, as na has a clear a after it. The word must be a qualifying word of Nārāyanina, which follows it, and consequently must be in the 3rd case. It is also expected that the word should signify some sort of relationship between the donor and the founder, whose names prove them to have been close relatives. I have therefore read the word as tad-bhrādakanā, and would translate it as by his younger brother." The word bhrādakana, again, is perplexing and new. I can suggest nothing better than that it was an irregular East-Indian compound of the two words bhrātā and kantyān.
Now, Damodara was evidently a high officer of the state, and we may expect to see his younger brother too in a similar position. We know from the Tarpandighi plate of Lakshmanasēnal that one Närāyana-datta was his minister of peace and war. Can this Narayana-datts be the Nārāyana of the present inscription ? Måla is an appellation of Vishnu, and the names Nárayapa and Damodara are also names of Vishnu. It was evidently a Vaishnava family and the name of the father agrees well with the names of his sons. If our conclusions, which are based on a series of surmises, are right, and if Narayana of the present inscription can be identified with Narayana-datta, the minister of peace and war of Lakshmaņa-Böna, we may read the name of Damodara's father as Maladetta and emend it to Mala-datta by taking the of de as an engraver's mistake.
Mr. Banerji read a visarga after iti, which is inadmissible; it should be read as 4, resembling the modern Bengali symbol for 4. It is not usual to put the two ciphers of a visarga in touch with one another as has been done in the present case.
1 Ep. Ind., Vol. XII, p. 6.
