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No. 14.]
THREE COPPER-PLATE GRANTS FROM MAYURBHANJ.
mention of Oḍra-vishaya is very interesting, showing that the name which was afterwards applied to the whole province was as yet confined only to a small region and originally denoted only a small district.
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The history of Narendrabhañja and his predecessors has already been discussed. As noted above, the inscription also records, at the end, the grant of a village by Bhanja Mahārāja-Raṇabhañja. The word immediately preceding this seems to be clearly napta or grandson. Unfor tunately, the word of three letters before napta, although very clearly engraved, cannot be read with certainty. The first and third letters are 'a' and 'va', but the letter in the middle is a peculiar one, and looks like sai or stai, none of which, however, gives any sense. In any case, for the present, Raṇabhañja of this short record must be identified with king Raṇabhañja, a similar short record of whom is engraved at the end of Plate A. It is very curious that a short record of this king was in both these instances added as a sort of post-script to the record of Narendrabhañja. In the present case, at any rate, we are tolerably certain, by the position of the last few letters of the plate in respect of the back part of the seal, that the whole record was engraved before the seal was attached, i.e., during the reign of king Narendrabhañja. The only reasonable conclusion seems to be that Raṇabhañja was a predecessor of Narendrabhañja, and an earlier grant made by him, perhaps to the same donee or to his family, was repeated in brief at the end at the latter's request, so that the same plate might serve him as a charter for both the grants.1
One peculiarity in the text of this grant requires special mention. In all the copper-plate grants of this family of kings, the word kusali or kusalinaḥ, generally added as an adjective of the king in the prose portion, immediately after his proper name, is omitted, and in most of them the words s-anunayam praha bhūpālān take the place of the usual verbs mānayati bōdhayati samādiśati. In the present grant we have all these three combined, with the exception only of samādisati.
Attention may be drawn to the expression Siva-charana-saroja-shaṭpada' (1. 13) used with reference to Narendrabhañja. The corresponding expression in A is Hara-charan-ārādhanakshapita-papaḥ' (l. 13-14). These prove that king Narendrabhañja was a devoted worshipper of Siva. The invocation to Siva at the beginning also shows that the family was Šaiva. The discoveries at Khiching fully corroborate this. The finest image unearthed from the ruins at Khiching is that of a standing Siva which was no doubt installed in the main temple whose magnificent ruins have been laid bare by recent excavations.
TEXT.
[The metres are noted above in connection with A, but the verses 2 and 3 are defective as some words have been left out as pointed out in the footnotes.]
Obverse.
1 Svasti [*] 2 O
3 thō bhava-bhaya-bhidurō Bhavō Bhavani(ni)śaḥ [*] vividha-samādhi-vi
namo Avighnesvarayaḥs || Sakala-bhuvan-aika-nā
1 [It is difficult to believe that Rauabhanja of the postscript grants in A and B was a predecessor of Narindrabhañja. It is not impossible that a portion of the back of the seal of B had to be cut away to make room for the last line of the subsidiary record for which no other space was available. In 11. 36-37 B clearly states that the subsidiary grant was inserted in the original grant (élasminn-eva sasane prakshipya). The duct of writing in these additional grants is quite different from that of the original grants. The writer in the two additional grants appears to be the same person, riz., Yakshadatta and the donor is also the same Ranabhanja in both. The reading in 1. 35 of B is asaiva napträ. If asaiva stands for asy-aiva, the person referred to must be the first ruler mentioned in the original grant, i.e., Köttabhañja whose grandson Ranabhanja was. Ed.] Read namo vighnesvaraya.
2 There is a symbol preceding Ori.
