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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[VOL. XXVII
No. 24-BAMHANI PLATES OF PANDAVA KING BHARATABALA: YEAR 2
(1 Plate)
B. CH. CHHABRA, OOTACAMUND
The Superintendent of Archæology, Rewa State, Baghelkhand, Central India, sent me this set of three copper plates, complete with the ring and the seal, for decipherment. According to the information kindly supplied by him, the find was unearthed, at a depth of nearly four inches, by one Maikua, Bharia ( a sub-caste among the Gouds) by caste, on the 28th October 1940, while clearing the grass and thereby preparing a kharihan (a piece of land for storing harvest) for his master, Gaya Prasad Brahmin, at a village called Bamhani, tahsil Sohagpur, Police Station Burhär (a railway station on the Bilaspur-Katni section of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway), of the Rewa State. There are, I am told, as many as seven villages of the name of Bamhani within the Rewa State, but the one with which we are concerned is distinguished by the foregoing description. It lies due cast of Burhår at a distance of about eighteen miles. I am indebted to His Highness the Bandhvesh Maharaja Saheb Bahadur, the Ruler of the Rewa State, for kindly according me permission to edit the record here.1
The plates measure each roughly 7" broad by 44" high. They are strung on a copper ring, about" in thickness, passing through a hole, " in diameter, cut in the centre of each plate near the margin. The ring must originally have been circular in shape, but in its present condition it is bent and elongated. Its ends are secured under a comparatively small seal with a diameter of ". The seal bears no emblem or legend; if there was any originally, it has now completely disappeared. The inscription on the plates is in an excellent state of preservation throughout. The first and third plates are engraved only on one side, while the second bears writing on both the sides. There are altogether 49 lines of writing, twelve being on the first face, thirteen on cach side of the second plate and eleven on the last. All the plates together with the ring and the seal weigh 94 tolas.
The characters belong to the Southern class of alphabets, a variety, with southern characteristics, of the Central India alphabet of about the fifth century A. D., as Fleet would name it. They represent a very rare type, in which the top of each letter, as a rule, consists of a small triangle with its apex downwards, and which, on that account, has appropriately been named nail-headed'. The known instances of the particular type employed in the present inscription are very few. In fact, I know of only two other examples: the Poona plates of the Vakaṭaka queen Prabhavatigupta and the Majhgawain plates of the Parivrajaka Mahārāja Hastin. The
1 The present article was already in an advanced stage of proof as carly as June 1942 when, owing to the war conditions, the publication of this journal was suspender. In the meantime a short note by myself, entitled King. dom of Mekalā, based on these plates, has appeared in the Bharata Kaumudi (Dr. Radha Kumud Mookerji Volume), Part I, Allahabad, 1945, pp. 215-9.
20. I. I., Vol. III (Gupta Inscriptions), pp. 18 f.
Above, Vol. XV, pp. 39 ff. and plate.
4 C. I. I., Vol. III, pp. 106 ff., plate XIV. From the portions of the first two lines of the Khoh copper plate inscription of the Parivrajaka Maharaja Samkshōbha of the year 209, reproduced on Plate IV in Cunningham's A. S. 1. Reports, Vol. IX, it appears that the script of this record is also of the same nail-headed variety as the one under discussion, but the reproduction of the full inscription on Plate XV in the C. I. I., Vol. III, does not bear it out. Additional examples of the present variety are, however, afforded by some minor inscriptions such as the short pilgrims' records engraved on the face of the wall in the cave of Durgakho near Chunar in the Mirzapur District of the United Provinces (Cunningham's 4. S. 1. ports, Vol. XI, Plate XXXVIII; Vol. XXI, Plate XXXII) and the Shorkot inscription of the year 83 supposed to be of the Gupta era (above, Vol. XVI, Plate facing p. 15). Some later examples are found in the Tur rock inscription in Chamba, assigned to the beginning of the eighth cen tury (Vogel, Anaquities of Chamba State, Part 1, p. 148, Plate XII) and in the first two lines of the Khamkhed plates (above, Vol. XXII, Plate facing p. 94). After this article had been sent to the press, Mr. N. L. Rao kindly drew my attention to two more instances; the Pandarangapalli grant of Avidheya (An. Rep. Mysore Arch. Depariment, 1929, Plate XIX, facing p. 196) and the Sunão Kala plates of Samgamasimha of the [Kalachuri] samvat 292 (above, Vol. X, Plate facing p. 74). While the former has some letters of the nail-headed variety spoken of here, the script of the latter is practically the same as that of the present record.
