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185
No. 33]
MEHAR PLATE OF DAMODARADEVA ficance, the biruda of Damodaradova is Vaishnavite in its form, and in this respect, it stands much nearer to the biruda, Arirāja-Danuja-nidhara, prefixed to the name of Dasarathulēva, identified hy Dr. N. K. Bhatta sali with Danujamādbava who flourished after the Sena rule.
Both Damodaradeva and Dasarathadora were Dēvānvayas and Soma- or Chandra-vansiya Kshatriyas, and both of them were worshippers of Vishnu.
These points of coincidence need an explanation. We may only ask: do they not suggest that Dasarathadeva was a descendant of Damodara, if not his immediate successor, and vertainly the most powerful king of the Deva family ?
In the present plate, Damodara leva is called Cujapuli only, while in the Adāvadi plate Dasarathadēva is honoured with the epithet of Asvajati-Gajapuli-Narapuli-rajatray-ādhipali. In the former, there is no epithet indicating the place of which Damõlara was the king; while in the latter Dasaratha boldly claims to have obtained the kingdom of Gauda and issued the charter from Vikramapura, which he could not have done had he not succeeded the later Sönas after their fall or extermination.
The Chittagong plate of Damodara refers to a village called Kētangapala, which was bounded on the north by the Mitachchada and had in its neighbourhool, if not actually within it, Baghapõkhira "Tiger's Pond'. The village may be identified with the modern Kötangyäpāla, forming a part of the village of Hashimpur, P. S. Patiyā, and bounded on the north by the MarichharaPukhariya which is still the name of a hamlet by the hillside, on the southern bank of the river Saikha. In other words, the inscription relates to a village in the district of Chittagong, and not elsewhere.
The present inscription places the village of Mēhāra in the khandala (subdivision) called Vāyisagrāma which in its tim was included in the Paralāyi vishaya of the Samatata mandala lying within the Paundravarddhana bhukti. The Mēhāragräma of the record being no other locality than the present village of Melar, it is easy to determine that Damodaratdiva's kingdom extended at least over the three districts of Tippera, Noakhali and Chittagong.
Now the question arises whether the rule of Dāmādara, or for the matter of that, of all the three kings of the Deva family, was confined to the three districts of Chittagong division, or it was coextensive with not only the whole of the Samatata mandala but also with the whole of the Paundravarddhana bhukti, as it was then known. Apart from being described as Gajapati in one plate and Sakaln-bhūpati-chakravartin (the Lord of all the kings), in the other there is no other indication whatever that Damodara or any predecessor of his in his own line was a parumount sovereign. Nor does it appear that they were Sīmantas under the successors of Lakshmanasena, who somehow maintained the position as Grudescara and paramount sovereign within the Paundravarddhana bhukti at least for seventeen years after the death of Lakshmamasina. The length of the reign of Kesava, the second son of Lakshmanasona, is not as yet determined. But certain it is that the reign of Madhumathana-Madhusūdana at least was synchronous with that of the two later Söna kings. Hal Damodara or any of his two predecessors succeeded in supplanting the Senas within the Paundra varddhana bhukti, he would have usurped forth with all the high-sounding epithets including Gaudēśvara, as was done subsequently by Dasarathadēva. But Damodara passed as the Arirūja-Chūnura-Mādhava without the title Gaulēsvara. It is in the Mehär plate of Dümüda radova that Samatata finds mention, perhaps, for the first time as a mandala, within, of course, the Paundravarddhana bhukti. And this may have been a creation of Purushottama's family for distinguishing it from Vanga, apparently a mandula under the rule of the later Sēnas within the same Paundravard dhana bhukti, which included in it Vikramapura and
1 Inscriptions of Bengal, III, p. 182.
: Kitangapali must then have comprised a much larger area than it doos now. XVI.1.20
