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No. 11.] GHUGRAHATI COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF SAMACHARA DEVA. 75
Three other copper-plates of a similar nature had, however, been found in the Faridpur district in 1891 and 1892 and been purchased for the Asiatic Society of Bengal by Dr. Hoernle. These, after various vicissitudes, were taken in hand by Mr. Pargiter and published in the Indian Antiquary of July, 1910, in a very able and critical article. The publication of these plates necessitated reconsideration of Mr. Banerji's propositions, which he did in an article published in the J. A. S. B., June, 1911. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Pargiter published an article in the August, 1911 number of the J. A. S. B., which was based on the first article of Mr. Banerji and was evidently written before Mr. Pargiter had occasion to see Mr. Banerji's second article. In it, Mr. Pargiter very ably defended the genuineness of the Faridpur plates and published a revised reading of the Ghugrahati plate, which went a long way towards clearing it from the aspersion of ambiguity and unintelligibility cast on it by Mr. Banerji. Mr. Pargiter also showed, by discussing the palæography of the grant, that it was not spurious, but a perfectly genuine one. Mr. Banerji answered this article in his paper entitled "Four forged grants from Faridpur" in J. A. S. B., Dec., 1914, but had no better success than before in maintaining his ground.. The recent discovery of five plates from the village of Damodarpur in the Dinajpur district of Bengal, and their publication by Prof. R. G. Basak in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XV, must perhaps induce Mr. Banerji now to reconsider his decision, as these plates bear close family resemblance to the Faridpur plates both as regards palæography and documentary form. In this article I shall not only try to furnish additional reasons, if any are at all required, for the recognition of the Faridpur plates as genuine, but also hope to identify the Mahārājādhirāja Samachara-dēva as one of the kings who took the place of the Guptas in Eastern India towards the end of the 6th Century A. D. It will be seen that in the presentation of the text and translation also, I have been able to improve upon Mr. Pargiter's reading of the plate in several important points.
I refrain from giving the usual description of the plates, its orthography, etc., since these have been completely dealt with by Messrs. Banerji and Pargiter, but proceed at once to give the text which I have read from the original plate, now in the Dacca Museum. Before doing so, I give, in brief, the contents of the inscription. It refers itself to the 14th year of the reign of a hitherto unknown emperor Samachara-deva who is styled Mahārājādhirāja. In that year, Jivadatta was the viceroy or governor in Navyavakäsika, which appears to have been the Divisional head-quarters. The District Officer in the district of Varaka-maṇḍala approved by Jivadatta was Pavittruka. The latter was assisted in his administration by a District Court presided over by the Judge Damuka. The affairs of the village or locality to which this refers, were in the joint care of a number of Elders (Vishaya-Mahattaraḥ), of whom six are mentioned as in the second plate of Dharmmaditya (Ind. Ant., July, 1910 p. 200). Other men of experience in the village had also a say in village affairs. These represented the villagers and like the Panchayets of the present day, transacted the ordinary civil and criminal affairs of the village.
Supratika Svāmi, a Brahman, approached the District Court presided over by Damuka as well as the Elders and men of experience of the locality and applied for a piece of waste land of that locality for settling himself on it. The Elders and the men of experience decided to give him the piece of land free of any consideration, and after authorising Kesava, Nayanaga and
i All my attempts at determining the exact find-spot of these three plates have hitherto been unavailing, Dr. Christie, Honorary Secretary to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in his letter No. 2234 of the 26th September, 1919, informed me that the plates had originally belonged to one Kohiluddin and were purchased from Allul Kak Abid, but he could not tell me in which particular village the plates were found.
It deserves to be noted, as already noted by Mr. Pargiter, that the name-endings of these Elders were Kunda, Palita, Ghōsha, Datta and Dasa, all of which are to be met with in the surnan.es of the present day Kayasthas and Navatākhas of Bengal,
K 2
