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No. 21.]
CUTTACK MUSEUM PLATES OF MADHAVAVARMAN.
149
Two other grants of his, namely the Buguda and Puri plates, have already been published. The inscription consists of 46 lines of writing which is engraved on the inner face of the first and third plates and on both the faces of the second or the middle one. Although a few letters are worn out and damaged here and there, the inscription is on the whole in a good state of preservation.
The characters of the inscription are a variety of the Northern alphabet which are hardly distinguishable from those of the Gañjām plates of Madhavaraja of the Gupta year 300, i.e., A. D. 619-20 and his Khurda plates. Its style of writing, so far as reflected in the engraving, is quite dissimilar to that of the Puri plates of Madhavavarman. In the former letters are formed by continuous lines, while in the latter by sharp and detached strokes. The alphabet of the Puri plates cannot therefore be regarded as quite normal, while in the characters of this record we should recognize the writing typical of Orissa in the first half of the seventh century A. D. Inspite of this difference in style of engraving the characters of the two sets of copper-plates do not reveal any material difference in paleography. In this connection it should be noted that the alphabet of the Buguda plates of Madhavavarman is definitely of a later type, which Kielhorn thought could not be placed earlier than the tenth century A. D. A contrary view is expressed however by Dr. Basak who has edited the Puri plates. According to him the characters are assignable to the seventh or eighth century A. D., and "mostly resemble those used in the Buguḍā plates". Although Kielhorn's opinion is not acceptable, it must be admitted that there is a marked difference in form between some of the important letters occurring in the Buguḍā plates and the two other records. Letters such as n, m, and I, have a decidedly later appearance in the Buguḍa plates. The enigma presented by these plates is to be attributed, however, to a factor not yet taken note of by epigraphists. As pointed out by Kielhorn, the Buguḍā plates originally bore another inscription, the letters of which probably were beaten in to make room' for the inscription which they now bear. It is possible that the original inscription engraved in the reign of Madhavavarman was re-engraved on the same plates in a subsequent period for some reason or other, a practice of which there are several well-known examples. The text of the document, as we find it now, presents many inaccuracies and lapses of the scribe, to which due attention has been drawn by Kielhorn. These presumably might have occurred in the process of re-engraving. If this view be accepted, the apparent incongruity in the palaeography of the three copper-plate grants of Madhavavarman could be satisfactorily explained.
The language of the inscription is Sanskrit. Excepting a few lines of prose it contains as many as twenty-two verses, seven of which (vv. 2, 5, 6, 7, 15, 16 and 22) are quite new. Of the remaining fifteen verses three are the customary donative ones and twelve occur in other land-grants of the Sailōdbhava dynasty. Among those that are common notable textual variations appear in vv. 13, 14, 20 and 21 of the present record. In v. 20 the word lekhita is used in the sense of lethaka, which probably has to be taken as an instance of matvarthiya ach. It is so used also in v. 16 of the Puri plates and in v. 18 of the Buguḍā plates.
Above, Vol. VII, Pls. between pp. 100-101, and Vol. XXIII, Pls. between pp. 128-29. The Purf plates are dated in the regnal year of Madhavavarman which has been doubtfully read as 23 (Basak, above, Vol. XXIII, p. 124). An examination of the original shows that the figures cannot be anything but 13.
Above, Vol. VI, Pls. between pp. 144-45; J. A. 8. B., Vol. LXXIII (1904), Part I, p. 283 and Pl. VI. Above, Vol. XXIII, p. 123.
I have not had the occasion to examine the original plates which are kept in the Madras Museum. But judging from a set of excellent photos kindly supplied to me by Mr. T. N. Ramachandran I can definitely endorse the opinion expressed by Kielhorn. (I had an occasion of examining, the original plates. There are certainly a few traces of an earlier inscription and this also seems to have been a Sailōdbhava record.-Ed.]
Mahabhashya, under Papini, 3, 4, 67. [The word is probably lekhitä, the nominative singular form of likhitri.-Ed.]
