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214
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XXII.
That this must be the reading is clear from the authors' own remarks that the symbol “ used for the first syllable of Rājēndra and for the third syllable of rājarājanya is quite different from that cmployed for ra elsewhere in the legend, being more like what one might expect to find for dra or pra." The photograph of the seal kindly sent by Lt. Col. Th. van Erp was examined by me in the office of the Government Epigraphist for India and found to agree with the reading given above. I may remark that there is no punctuation mark in the legend.
At the time the large Leiden plates were published, the account furnished in them formed the only authentic source for Chöla history and served to remove some of the misconceptions and wrong conjectures regarding a few of the members of the Chöļa family. The editors had correctly estimated the worth of the record when they said that it was the first Chola inscription yet translated containing much definite information respecting the dynasty, and must be regarded as of the greatest importance'. The genealogy it furnished superseded those published by Sewell in his Lists of Antiquities and formed an important basis for future investigations. Since the editing of these plates, a number of valuable Chõla records have been edited critically. Of these, the most important is the Tiruvalangadu grant discovered by me in 1906 and edited in the South Indian Inscriptions, Volume III. No less useful is the stone inscription of Virarājēndra found at Kanyakumäri by the late Gopinatha Rao and odited by me in the Travancore Archeological Series, Volume III. The Anbil plates of Sundara-Chõļa and the Madras Museum plates of Uttama-Chõļa, the former edited in the Epigraphia Indicat and the latter in the South Indian Inscriptions, are other important ones. Besides these epigraphical sources, there are a few Tamil historical texts which also aid the student in his study of the Chola history. These are the Kalingattupparani and the Kulottunga sõlanulā, first noticed by the late Kanakasabhai Pillai in the Indian Antiquary, Vikrama bölan-ulā, Rājarājasõlan-ulā and others, the texts of which had since been edited with care.
Considering the time of publication, it must be said that the inscription on the Leiden plates has been fairly well made out. But there are a few mistakes of the authors as well as of the printer which mar the text and distort the sense. They could be easily corrected without having recourse to the original, mainly with the help of the reading of other allied records. I noted down the mistakes when I took up its study seriously while editing the Kanyakumāri inscription in the Travancore Archeological Series nearly 15 years ago. On that occasion, I also revised the text of the Leiden plates, which on comparison with the impressions now kindly secured by the Government Epigraphist is found to agree. One of the serious defects in the previous edition of this inscription is the wrong arrangement of some of the plates. The plate marked there as “Fifteenth plate; second side" is really the fourteenth plate, second side. Similarly the plate marked "Fourteenth plate: second side" is in fact the fifteenth plate, second side. The inscription then reads through without any interruption; the regular order of the lines 284 to 316 given in the volume should be 284, 305 to 315, 295 to 304, 285 to 294 and 316.
While the published Sanskrit text is almost free from errors of transcription, the Tamil por. tion contains too many mistakes to be noticed here. The best way will be to give a correct version of the whole with proper division of words adding foot-notes wherever serious changes are effected. Most of the mistakes are simple ones due to taking ra for the length stroke from which it is hardly distinguishable or due to taking the basic consonant as the first combined consonant and vice
1 Vol. II, pp. 16+168. 2 See pages 283 to 489.
Pages 87 to 158. • Vol. XV, pp. 44-72. *Vol. III, pp. 264 ff.
