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6 स (ब्रह्मचारी | धूमयकेम्ब (म्य) रपरवधूवा (मा) व्यवर्ष वि
7 नोहरि अनां मलयचितोवर
विश्वविजयो नामावशेषोकतः ।
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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
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1 Metre: Mandākrāntā.
• Metre Sardulavikridita.
[VOL. XXVI
No. 40-A COPPER-PLATE GRANT OF SILAHARA CHHADVAIDEVA
BY PROF. V. V. MIRASHI, M.A., AND M.G. DIKSHIT, B.A.
This grant was first brought to notice by the late Mr. R. D. Banerji in the Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, Western Circle, for 1919-20, pp. 55-6. No information is available about its original find-spot. It was in the collection of the late Mr. Gerson Da Cunha and was purchased by the Trustees of the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, in 1919. It has since been preserved in that Museum. In the aforementioned report Mr. Banerji has given a brief and, in some respects, incorrect account of the grant, but it has nowhere been critically edited so far. In view of its historical importance, we edit it here with the kind permission of the authorities of the Prince of Wales Museum, which we secured through the good offices of Mr. G. R. Gyani, M.A., Curator of the Archæological Section of the Museum.
The grant is engraved on three copper-plates, of which the first and the third bear writing on one side only and the second on both the sides. The plates measure about 7-4" broad and 6" high. Their total weight is 175 tolas. At the centre of the top of each plate there is a hole" .5" in diameter for the ring which originally held all the plates together, but no ring or seal has yet been found. The inscription contains 76 lines of writing, of which twenty are written on the inner side of the first plate, twenty-one and twenty on the first and the second side respectively of the recond plate and the remaining fifteen on the inner side of the third plate. The writing is throughout in an excellent state of preservation.
The characters are of the Nagari alphabet resembling those of the Sinda prince Adityavarman's grant dated Saka 887. Like the latter record, the present grant is written in a cursive hand. The technical execution is very bad as the record has throughout been written and engraved in a most negligent manner. Several letters, being very crudely and imperfectly formed, are changed quite out of recognition. There are, besides, mistakes of orthography, omissions of letters, and words and in two places (viz., in lines 20 and 21 ) of nearly half a verse. As Mr. Banerji
Dr. Altekar has cited two passages from it and discussed some historical information contained in it in his Rashtrakutas and Their Times, pp. 106 and 109, but he has not included it in his list of Silähära inscriptions in the Ind. Cul., Vol. II, pp. 430 ff.
Banerji's statement that the copper-plates were not joined together as there is no hole in any one of them is incorrect.
Above, Vol. XXV, pp. 164 ff.
