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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA..
[VOL. XVIII.
K. Antirigam plates of Yasabhañjadeva.
"This is a set of three thin copper-plates strung on a ring of the same metal passing through a hole about " in diameter near the proper right margin. They are oblong in shape and have four faces of writing in all, the first and the last being blank on the outer sides. They have no rims worth the name; still the writing is in good preservation. The ring which is about 1" in diameter carries a turned knob into the base of which its two ends are fixed. The knob is about 1" long and is a miniature representation of the kalasika seen on the top of the broad umbrella used in the South Indian temples. The plates are a little drawn out in the side margins and have therefore slightly rounded corners. They measure about 81" in breadth and 3 in height. The weight of the set is 72 tolas. The plates were found in a village called Antirigam in the Purbakhanda division of the Chatrapur tāluk, not far from Jauguḍa, in a field while ploughing."
The language of all the records is Sanskrit written in the Nagari character influenced by the Oriya style more conspicuously in charter K than the three others, which closely resemble one another not only in characters, but in the phraseology used in them. All the records as usual are divided into three portions, the first and the third in verse, the former recording the invocations to the family god and the genealogy of the king and the latter benedictions and imprecations quoted from religious books, while the second or the middle portion in prose deals with the business in hand. There is also a little prose at the end of the records giving the names of the messenger, the writer, the engraver and the seal-affixer. The first portion being composed by a learned man of the court once for all during the currency of a reign, is always ornate and so it is in the present grants. The second is usually full of mistakes, as business respects neither rhetoric nor grammar and goes straight to the point, even admitting forms like Svamisya, Sarmisya, Agnihotrisya, so long as the sense is not obscured. Imprecations-being mere quotations from Dharma-Sastras are pure formalities of the age, given little care in point of accuracy, though in well written records they receive as much attention as the other parts of the records. In our records there is ample evidence of the carelessness with which quotations have been entered. In some cases the verses are incomplete, in others they have been mutilated and strung together in a new form, for instance, see J, where a verse occurs as follows:
यस्वयस्य यदा भूमिस्तस्वतस्य तदा फलं । मा भुवफलमा वः परदत्तानुपालन 7: 1 which gives a jumble of mis-spellings and misjoinders.
As regards the peculiarities in writing a full description has been given by Dr. Kielhorn in his article on the Orissa plates of Vidyadharabhañja, re-edited by him in Vol. 1 p. 271 ff. in this Journal. His remarks almost wholly apply to the plates H, I and J, and need not be repeated. The plates K are more modern than the other three and exhibit more prominently the Oriya style of writing, the chief characteristic of which is the rounding of the straight or angular por tions into a curve. The plates H, I and J will show that the top lines of letters are not straight, but slightly curved, furnishing each letter with a sort of a horn. In K the form of gets transformed into, & into a into and so on. These are really Oriya letters. Of course Oriya characters are no other than Nagari letters with the inevitable rounding resulting from an iron stylus playing on palm leaves, which would be torn if straight lines were drawn on them. As a matter of fact the slanting limbs of the letters in all these four records are too prominent to require any mention. I would not therefore dilate any further on this point.
I shall now proceed to the contents of the records and the historical data they give us. The charters Hand I were issued from Vañjulvaka by Netribhañjadēva surnamed Kalyanakalasa, son of Banabhañjadeva, grandson of Satrubhañjadeva and great-grandson of Silabhañjadēva,
