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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
VOLUME XXVI.
No. 1.-INDIA OFFICE PLATE OF LAKSHMANASENA.
BY DR. H. N. RANDLE, LONDON. This is the plate to which Nalini Kanta Bhattasali drew attention in 1927 under the title "The Lost Bhowal Copper-Plate of Laksmana Sena Deva of Bengal,”! and its reappearance fully confirms the conclusions reached by Bhattasali on the evidence of a report (fortunately printed in the Calcutta Gazette, May 14, 1829) of a meeting of the Asiatic Society held on May 6, 1829. From this it appears that Walters, Magistrate of Dacca, had obtained the plate from Golak Narayan Roy, zamindar of Bhabyal and presented it to the Society. Although the
translation' furnished by the Pandit of the Dacca City Court was, as H. H. Wilson, the Society's Secretary, pointed out, almost entirely a product of his own invention, it included a few proper names which are to be found in the present plate,- Jye Seen (Vijayasēna), Goree Pereah (Gauri priyā, line 1), Mulla Seen (Vallalasēna ?), the Sybolenee river (Saivalini, line 23) and Beer Seen (Virasēna, line 6). And the Pandit rightly said that the inscription commences with an invocation of Narayunu." Wilson recognised it as an ordinary land-grant of a Sēna king, reading the date (really 27, as Bhattasali conjectured) as 37, and remarking that the imperfect condition of the plate rendered it very problematical whether it would hereafter be more satisfactorily deciphered." The plate was forgotten for half a century, until Navinachandra Bhadra in his Bhāöyālēr itihāsa (1875) gave a brief account of the finding of it ;' and then again forgotten for another half century, until Bhattasali's article appeared in 1927. In 1930 I turned out from a safe in the India Office Library a number of copper-plates, and ascertained that, with three or four possible exceptions, all had been published. The present plate was one of these exceptions. Subsequent
1 Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. III (1927), pp. 89-96. I published a preliminary notice of the reappear. ance of the plate in the same journal, Vol. XV (1939), pp. 300-302, and the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal then claimed it. It has now been restored to the possession of the Society
Bhattasali points out that the Asiatic Society's proceedings were not printed before 1821. and again not between 1827 and 1829. In 1829 they were printed in the monthly " Cleanings of Science". which, however, may not have included the May proceedings.
Wilson did not allow for the subsequent discovery of other similar plates which supplement the imperfeu. tions of is one.
The relevant passage is at p. 26. I am indebted to my colleague Mr. R. H. Williams, Assistant Keeper at the India Office Library, for the following translation. "At Bhãoyal, amongst the Chandals was a certain Chashi Nigarl who was accustomed to do accounts and had even procured some books. Some time previously he bad found a copper-plate with some characters on it, opposite the aforementioned hermitage of Maghi. At the instance of & zamindar who formerly lived in the place, the late Mahatma Golak Nārāyana Raya Chaudhuri, many attempts were made to read this inscription, but no one was able to identify it. It was sent to a certain learned Englishman of Dacca ; but there too no one was able to decipher it, so it was forwarded to Calcutta. Again in that olty no one could read it, so at last it has been sent to England ".
