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No. 35.)
THE SMALLER LEIDEN PLATES OF KULOTTUNGA I.
387
No. 35.---THE SMALLER LEIDEN PLATES (OF KULOTTUNGA I).
BY K. V. SUBRAHMANYA AIYER, B.A., COIMBATORE. The inscription edited below is engraved on & set of throe copper-plates now preserved in the Leiden University Museum in Holland. It was once published without plates in the Arch@o. logical Survey of South India, Volume IV, pp. 224 ff., by Burgess and Natesa Sastri as early as 1886. Though the text of the inscription had been fairly well made out, the translation given in the volume requires to be largely amended. It is also considered desirable to give facsimile plates of the inscription. Dr. N. P. Chakravarti, the Government Epigraphist for India, very kindly obtained from the Museum authorities in Leiden one set of excellent rubbings of the inscription and a photograph of the seal and placed them at my disposal for study and publication in the Epigraphia Indica.
The three plates each of which measures 14-8 inches by 5-3 inches—that form this set, are held together by a strong ring bearing a large seal very similar to the one on the Larger Leiden Plates. The following is the reading of the legend on this seal by Burgess and Natesa Sastri :
Sri-Kulõttunga-Chõlasya Rājakësarivarmaṇaḥ
punyam kehānisvara-sabhā-chūdā-ratnāyā(ya) sāganam The editors note:“ whether through mistake on the part of the engraver or from want of room to get the whole inscription into the one line round the circumference, is uncertain, but the syllables- ļasya Rājakësarivarmanah are inserted below aga-Cho and punyam kshoạiśvara between which they must be read, and this, together with the peculiar forms of some of the letters, makes the legend difficult to decipher". The fact that the legend runs round the circular seal and has the syllables lasya, etc., engraved below in a second line is a clear indication that what is written below forms the end of the legend. And since it is certain that Sri-Kulöttunga-Cho must precede the portion contained in the second line, the commencement, i.e., the first half of the verse forming the legend is Punyam kshönisvara-sabha-chudā-ratnāyā sāsanam. In this legend, the compound kshönisvara-sabhā-chudā-ratnaya has been translated as "to the crest jewel of the assembly of earth-rulers" by Messrs. Burgess and Natesa Sastri.There is no doubt that the engraver had made some mistake here as had been supposed by these scholars. It seems to me, however, that the compound must have specific reference to the sangha of the Buddhist church (palli) erected at Nagapattanam by king Chūdāmaņivarman of Katāba. Sabhā in the legend is no doubt a synonym of sangha : and the term ratna, which is often applied to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the sole resorts of the Buddhists, is highly suggestive of and favourable to connecting sabha with the Buddhist shrine and creed. There is yet another suggestion contained in the terms used in the same compound : chudāratna may be taken to stand for chūdāmaņi, perhaps & contracted form of Chudāmanivarma-vihāra, which was the name of the Buddhist monument called after its royal founder Chūdāmaņivarman : but the intervening position of the word sabhā between kshönisvara and chūdāraina makes the interpretation difficult. Had the word sabha with the appropriate termination been used at the end of the compound, it would have been quite easy to interpret the word into "to the sangha of the vihara erected by) king Chūdāmaņivarman" which, it seems, was intended to be conveyed by the legend. In fact the inscription on the plates as will be pointed out in the sequel, tells us clearly that the ambassadors from the king of
[The impressions of this inscription also were very kindly prepared by Lt. Col. Th. van Erp of Rijks-Ethnographisch Museum, Leiden, at the request of Prof. J. Ph. Vogel -Ed.]
