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[VOL. XXVI.
script, the names of donees and the officers responsible for execution of the documents leave no room for doubt as to the identity of both Bhanu and Bhanudatta as being one and the same person. The present record presumably belongs to an earlier part of Bhanu[datta]'s career in fact, the dates given suggest a little over three months' priority over the Sōrō record.
The chiefs of the Sōrō plates must have ruled over a severely circumscribed area, and that too at the pleasure of some higher power. Bhanudatta and perhaps Somadatta (of the Sōrō plates), between whom some kinship has been claimed, may well have worked as deputies to an overlord whose personality remains obscure: he is apparently vaguely referred to as -Parambhoivaka in the inserphon
The date given is the year 5, the 4th day of Märgasirsha. The year is apparently regnal. Palæographically, our record is to be assigned to the second half of the sixth century A. D.
Of the localities mentioned, Sarepha has already been identified by Mr. N. G. Majumdar with Sörö in the Balasore District of Orissa. It was apparently the headquarters of the district (vi-haya) called Sarephāhāra in the present inscription. I am unable to locate the village Nandirata.
1 Above, Vol. XXIII, p. 200.
I would suggest that he may have been the Paramadevatädhidaivata, Paramabhattaraka Sambhuyasas (enended reading) mentioned as the overlord of a chief called Maharaja Sivaraja in the Patiäkellä (Cuttack District, Orissa) plate (above, Vol. IX, pp. 287 ff. and plate) and also in 'Plate A' of the Sōrō grants (ibid, Vol. XXIII, pp. 201-202 and plate). From the joint evidence of the Patiäkellä and the Soro plates it is reasonable to assume that Sambhuya sas ruled as an independent ruler over the wide tract of country anciently known as Tösalt and now roughly covering the districts of Balasore, Puri and Cuttack. Maharaja Somadatta and Mahārāja Bhānudatta of the Sōrō plates were evidently more or less equal in status to Maharaja Sivaraja of the Patiäkellä grant. It seems very significant that both Somadatta and Bhanudatta hold such feudatory titles as Mahapratīhāra, Mahasamanta, Mahabulädhikrita, etc.
