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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XXVI.
examination, in the light of Bhattasali's article, has convinced me that it is the Bhowal (Bhaōyal) copper-plate. In view of the fact that H. H. Wilson was afterwards Librarian to the East India Company, it is not difficult to suppose that it came to the East India House with him.
Walters' account of the find-spot of the plate is as follows:-" About thirty miles north of the city of Dacca, a few miles above the site of the ancient fortress of Akdala, and a short distance from the banks of the river Luck'iah, is situated Mowza Rajabary, appertaining to pergunnah Bhowal, and included in the modern division of thannah Jamalpore. At this place, on the crest of a low hill, stands an ancient building called by the natives Moggee's Mut (Maghir matha). It is built in the usual pyramidal form of Hindoo muts, but of considerable solidity, and contains a small vaulted apartment... Close to the mut is a tank of some magnitude... At a distance of about two miles to the north-west of the mut stood the palace of Raja Chandal... A large tank called Dunwa Digee, and the scattered remains of old brick buildings, evince that the spot was once the habitation of man.. About forty years ago the accompanying copper tablet was dug up by a Koonch ryot, at a short distance from the mut. It was conveyed to the Bhowal zemindar, Luckhenarain Rae, from whose son, Golucknarain Rae it has now been obtained". These topographical clues should be sufficient, but they are not in fact easily intelligible to a person using modern maps and gazetteers, since Bhowal and "Mowza Rajabary" are unknown to the Gazetteers and are not to be found on modern maps, while the Jamalpur of modern maps is not 30 miles but 90 miles to the north-west (not north) of Dacca. The distance from Dacca, and proximity to the river Lakhya or Lakshya remain the only useful pointers to modern maps. The Lakhya figures on the maps1 as the name of that stretch of river which runs roughly north and south through the Kaliganj and Rupganj sections of the Dacca District. Older maps are helpful, and the map of the western districts of the Dacca Division contained in Volume V of Hunter's Statistical Account of Bengal (1875) marks in the Dacca district of the division, " Jaidebpur or Bhowal", and " Bhowal or Nagari". There is no doubt that the former locality is the relevant one as the names of zamindars mentioned in Mr. Walters' account show. The plate must have been found in the extreme north of the Dacca District since Walters located Mowza Rajabary 30 miles north of Dacca and must then have been brought to Jaydebpur (otherwise called Bhowal). The thana Kapasia appears to be indicated as the locality of the find. An account of Bhowal and "Capassia" will be found in James Taylor's Sketch of the Topography and Statistics of Dacca (Calcutta, 1840, pp. 110-118).
The India Office plate is a single plate measuring 13 x 12 inches, weighing 7 lbs., and having 59 lines incised upon it, 30 on the obverse and 29 on the reverse. The seal, projected from the top edge in the shape of an inverted shield or heart, carries the usual Sena device, the image of Sadasiva, 3 inches in diameter, fixed by a stout central bolt almost inch in diameter which projects about inch on the reverse. There is a certain amount of corrosion, which affects especially the proper right side of the reverse, so that the first ten or twelve aksharas of many lines in the latter half of the inscription are more or less illegible. But (as Bhattasali had rightly conjectured)
1 See Survey map-sheets of Bengal (1 mile to the inch-1919), 78. L. 12 and 79. I. 9.
1 See Eastern Bengal District Gazetteers, Dacca (1912), pp. 183 f., under Jaydebpur.
As to Walters' "thannah Jamalpore ", which included the "pergunnah Bhowal", Bengal map-sheet 79. I. 9 shows a Jamalpur and a Jamalpur Chak near and on the Lakhya river in the Källganj part of Dacca District, Neither appears on Hunter's map; but Jumalpoor is marked as the headquarters of a thana on the map in Principal heads of the history and statistics of the Dacca Division (Calcutta, 1868). The same map shows "Joydebpoor or Bhowal" some 12 miles west of Jumalpoor, and Kapasia some 30 miles north of Dacca. Ekdalla is marked about 5 miles north-east of Jumalpoor.
