________________
•
No. 8.)
NANDAPOR COPPER-PLATE OF GUPTA YEAR 169.
Exhibition of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, held on the 3rd February, 1936. Subsequently, at my request Mr. Sarkar very kindly handed it over to me for decipherment and publication. So far as available information goes, the copper-plate comes from a village called Nandapurl which lies on the southern bank of the Ganges, at a distance of about two miles to the north-east of Surajgarhā in the District of Monghyr. The plate is said to have been fixed to the wall of a niche in a dilapidated temple close to the site of a Siva-linga locally known as "Burhānáth Mahādēva'. According to reports collected by Mr. Sarkar, Nandapur and its neighbourhood are full of ruins representing an ancient site, a part of which has perished due to the erosion of the river bank.
This is a single sheet of copper, measuring about 74'X4%. It bears inscription on both sides, there being in all nineteen lines of writing of which fifteen are on the obverse and only four on the reverse. A seal is attached to the plate, which originally must have borne an inscription. But it has since suffered much from corrosion with the result that none of the letters is at present preserved. Probably two letters are also missing in line 4, just where the donee's namo was mentioned, and a few are damaged, or partly obliterated, in lines 17 and 18. The rest of the document is in a fair state of preservation, and the engraving is, on the whole, well executed.
The characters belong to the eastern variety of the Gupta Alphabet (cf. la, sha, sa and ha) as found in the Dhānäidaha, Damodarpur, Baigram and Pāhārpur copper-plates, being typical of the writing prevalent in Bengal during the fifth century A.D. Attention may be drawn to the hook-like sign for medial ā attached to the bottom of some letters in making up the sign for the medial o, e.g., in Görakshita (1. 12), which occurs also in other records of the period. Another form of the medial a sign is also used, in the shape of an upright stroke hanging from the right side of the mätra. When applied to na and ma this stroke is lengthened, reaching the bottom of the letter where it is slightly bent to the left, e.g., in Brāhmanā- (1. 3) and sarimānam (1. 15), in which we must recognize an advanced form of the sign. The forms of the final t and m are noteworthy, e.g., in vaset (1. 19) and dattam (1.13). The numerical signs for 4, 100, 60, 9 and 8 occur in the inscription (11. 13, 19).
The language of the record is Sanskrit prose, excepting that there are two imprecatory verses in lines 17-18. The phraseology will be found to tally in many respects with that of the Baigrām copper-plate. As regards orthography, we should note the use of both ba and va. But the writer of the document has failed to distinguish between the two letters in the words bāhya (11. 5, 9), stamba (11. 5, 9), kutumbin (1l. 2, 13) and Bandhudāsa (1. 8), in all these instances the sign for va being used instead of that for ba. The consonants ka and ta are often doubled before a subscript , e.g., in vikkrayo (11. 6, 9), göttra (1. 3) and kshettra (1. 13), although the word vikraya is spelt with a single ka in line 10. Some of the consonants following a superscript rare occasionally doubled, e.g., in pravarttanäya (1. 4) and dharmma (1. 11).
The charter was issued from a village called Ambila. It records the purchase of 4 kulyavapas of fallow land within the village of Jangöyikā, at the rate of two dināras per kulyavāpa, by the Vishayapati Chhattramaha, and the transfer of the same property as gift to a Brāhmaṇa, to enable him to perform the Five Great Sacrifices'. The name of the donee ending in svāmin cannot be made out with certainty. He was an inhabitant of Nanda-vithi and Khata. porana-agrahāra, and belonged to the Kāsyapa-gotra and the Chhandōga (charana of the Samavēda). The land was bounded on the south by the plot given away to Gorakshita and on the
It is marked as Nandpur' in the 1'-scale map of the Survey of India (Sheet No. 72 K:3 and 7) published in 1925.
Cf. e.g., Faridpur grant of Gopachandra, Ind. Ant., Vol. XXXIX, Pl. III (facing p. 204), 1. 24. . Ante, Vol. XXI, pp. 81-82.
Similarly in the Baigräm copper-plate the letter va instead of ba occurs in stamba in line 5, while ha is oor rootly employed in samba in line 11, in bahya in lines 5 and 11, and in kufumbin in line %.
