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No. 42.) LUCKNOW MUSEUM PLATE OY JAYACHCHANDRADEVA: V. 8. 1237.
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No. 42.-LUCKNOW MUSEUM PLATE OF JAYACHCHANDRADEVA: V. S. 1237.
BY N. P. CHAKRAVARTI, M.A., PH.D., OOTACAMUND. The record edited below is found on a single copper-plate now preserved in the Provincial Museum, Lucknow. No information is available as to where it was discovered. According to the information kindly supplied by Rai Bahadur Prayag Dayal, Curator of the Lucknow Museum, it was purchased at Lucknow from Messrs. Mata Prasad Sita Ram of Benares on the 12th October, 1935.
The plate which is inscribed on one side only, measures 1'7" x 1'2". Its edges are fashioned thicker and raised into rims for the protection of the writing. In the upper part of the plate there is a hole for the passing of the ring. Both the ring and the seal which was once affixed to the ring, are now migging. The plate contains 36 lines of writing, the letters being about to z of an inch in height. It weighs about 5021 tolas. A piece in the left hand corner at the bottom of the plate is broker and lost. This has caused damage to the last four lines in each of which five or six letters are lost at the beginning. One letter in l. 13 and two or three letters in 11. 16-17 are also partly damaged. But there is nothing in the plate which cannot be restored from the other known records of the Gähadavālas of Kanauj to which family the grant belongs.
The characters of the inscription are Nagari and the language Sanskrit. There are altogether 26 verses composed in different metres of which one is introductory in praise of Lakshmi and Vishnu found at the commencement of almost all the Gähadavāla grants, 13 are devoted to the descriptions of the different rulers mentioned in the record and the last twelve are imprecatory and benedictory verses. With the exception of these verses the rest of the record is in prose.
The inscription has been carefully written and in respect of orthography the following points may be noted : (1) B is denoted by the sign for v everywhere except in babhramur= in l. 8, e.g. vāhuvalli-vaṁdho (1.7), -āmvu (1.8), Vali (1. 10), vahala (1. 14), etc. (2) Combinations of consonants and. nasals have been represented by both anusvåra and a nasal of the same class without any discrimination, e.g. akunthorkantha and ärambhë (1.1), - Endrao (1.4), ronkita (1.5), kumbhi, mandala (1.6), -anumantā (1. 29), etc., as against samrambhah (1.1), Mahichandra (1.3), mandalo (1.3), sāṁdt- (1.7), Govindachandra (1.8), -indra (1.11), mantri (1. 20), etc. (3) A consonant in conjunction with a subscript has never been doubled but one following has very often been doubled, e.g. dör. vikramën=ārjjitam (1.4), kirtti, varnnita (1. 10), avatirnna (1. 12), etc., the few exceptions being jayārthan, -arthini (1. 11), nirjhara (1. 14), etc. (4) has been wrongly used for & in anisam (1. 4), gatasas=(1. 5), vasād=(1.7), rāsēh (1.8), etc., and & for s in-olla fitaih (1.5), -asrigo, udbhāśitah (1.7), Librishu (1.8), yasāmsi (1. 11), sahasram (1. 13), etc. (5) Final m is found only in phalam (1. 30), anu svāra being used in other places. (6) For want of sufficient space in a particular line when a part of a word had to be engraved in the next, sometimes one or two vertical strokes have been used at the end of the former to show the continuity, cf., for example the ends of 11. 21 and 33. The record contains a few other mistakes which have been corrected either in the text or in the footnotes accompanying it.
The donor of the grant is the Paramabhatāraka-Mahārājādhiraja-Paramēsvara-Parama māhèsvara Jayachchandradēva, the Gähadavāla ruler of Kanauj and Benares, of whom we have already sixteen records dating from V. S. 1226 to V. S. 1245 (A.D. 1170-89). The present record does not contain any new information with the exception of what is imparted by the grant portion. The genealogy of the donor is given in verses 2-12 and once again in 11. 14-18 wbere the names of the first two members of the family are omitted. The list begins, as in the other
1 See H. C. Ray, Dynastic History of Northern India, Vol. I, pp. 636-41.
