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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
VOLUME XXIII.
No. 1.-PENDRABANDH PLATES OF PRATAPAMALLA: THE (KALACHURI] YEAR 965.
By Prof. V. V. MIRASHI, M.A., NAGPUR. These plates were first brought to my notice in February 1934 by Pandit Lochana Prasada Pandeya, Honorary Secretary, Mahäkosala Historical Society, who desired me to edit them. I requested the Curator of the Nagpur Museum to procure the plates for my examination, which he kindly did through the good offices of the Deputy Commissioner of Raipur. The plates are in the possession of Thakur Gokul Singh, Mälguzar of Pēndrābandh, a village (N. Lat. 21:39, E. Long. 83) in the Baloda Bazār tahsil of the Raipur District, C. P., and it is said that they have been in his family for some generations.
They are two massive copper-plates measuring from 111 to 12" in length and from 71" to 8' in breadth and about l" in thickness. The first plate weighs 155 tolas and the second 133 tolas. At the centre of the top of each plate there is a hole, 1' in diameter for a ring to connect it with the other plate. This ring, which is also of copper, is circular in shape and about 4' in diameter, with a round seal 2.6" in diameter. About one-third portion of the ring was broken off when the plates reached me. The plates were not, therefore, connected by the ring, but there is no reason to doubt that the latter actually belongs to the plates. The weight of the broken ring with the seal is 16 tolas. The edges of the plates have been neither fashioned thicker nor raised into rims. Still the inscription is very well preserved and there is no uncertainty about its reading. The plates are inscribed on the inner side only. There are 35 lines in all, 17 being inscribed on the first plate and the remaining 18 on the second. The average size of letters is 3" except in the last two lines where it is reduced to .2". On the seal is inscribed in the centre & crudely executed figure of Lakshmi, seated cross-legged on a lotus seat, flanked on either side by an elephant with a jar in his uplifted trunk to pour water on the head of the goddess. In the lower part of the seal there is the legend Raja-srimat-Pratāpamalladērah in a horizontal line and below it appears a sheathed sword lying parallel to it. The characters are Nāgari. The letters are deeply cut but not well formed. Besides the usual form of k, there appears another in the conjunct ksh and OCCAsionally in kr; see di(vi)kramena, 1. 9 and samkrānta., 1. 10. In writing conjunct letters the engraver has not distinguished between pa and ya and la and na; in some cases he has also incised pa for ma; see tasya, 1. 6, Gokarnnau, 1. 12 and Suvarnna-, 1. 21, and nirmpita for nirmmita, 1. 9. A final consonant is shown by a slunting stroke at the foot of the vertical only in one case, viz., vasel, 1. 32; but contrast randhuna for bandhün, 1. 6, satrūna for satrün, 1. 9, etc. The signs for the superscript and anusvära are, in some cases, added before the sign for medial i; cf. -redine, 1. 19 and mahatim, 1. 19. The sign for avagraha in l. 2 differs from that in 1. 26. A superfluous syllable is scored off by two short vertical strokes at the top, see noi in l. 32. The visarga which was wrongly omitted after khamdana in l. 14 is written inmediately below the line. In two other cases the omission is indicated by & käkapada, whose position and
