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No. 11]
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POLSARA PLATES OF ARKESVARADEVA ; YUGABDA 4248 No 11-POLSARA PLATES OF ARKESVARADEVA ; YUGABDA 4248
(1 Plate)
DINES CHANDRA SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND
In the last week of December 1949, I received for examination some copper-plate inscriptions belonging to the Utkal University, Cuttack, from its learned Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Chintāmaņi Acharya. The inscription under discussion was one of them. It was collected by Mr. Sadāśiva Ratha Sarmā, who has been appointed by the University a Research Assistant to go round different parts of Orissa and collect materials for the compilation of an authentic history of the country. On the 7th August 1949, in course of his tour in the Ganjam District, Mr. Ratha Sarmā found the present set of copper plates with an inhabitant of the village of Polsara, named Dwitiya Parida, who had discovered them while tilling a piece of land about the beginning of May 1949. I thank Mr. Acharya for kindly allowing me to publish the inscription.
The set consists of three plates each measuring 7 inches by 3.7 inches. They are held together by a ring to which a seal is soldered. The seal, although smaller in size, closely resembles the seal attached to the copper-plate charters of the imperial Gangas and bears the figure of a seated bull in full relief, facing front and bedecked with ornamental drapery and a bell tied to its neck. The first and the last plates are engraved on the inner side only, while the second is written on both sides. The incision is deep and the writing is clear, although most of the letters show signs of additional scratches probably due to some defect of the engraver's tool. There are altogether 40 lines of writing of which the first plate bears 11 lines and the third 9 lines only, while the second plate has ten lines of writing on the obverse and ten on the reverse. The plates without the ring weigh 80 tolas, while the ring with the seal weighs 24 tolas.
The characters belong to that variety of the East Indian script of the early mediaeval period which is usually called proto-Bengali, although, as I have suggested elsewhere, ' a more appropriate name for the script is Gaudi. On palaeographical grounds, the inscription is ascribable to the 12th or the 13th century. The characters closely resemble those employed in a copper plate charter of Ganga Anangabhima III (circa 1211-38 A. D.) recently examined by me. Of initial vowels, we have in the inscription only a (lines 33, 40) and ri (cf. Rishikulya in line 14), the latter little differing in shape from jh in Jhādakhanda (line 18). As usual with East Indian epigraphs of the age in question, 6 is generally indicated by the sign for v. But in some cases both b and v appear to have a slanting stroke across the loop (cf. 'amvu-samvarddhitao in line 9 and vah in line 35) which resembles the stroke distinguishing b from v in Dēvanāgari. It, however, seems to me to be nothing but a scratch, to the existence of which in the formation of most letters of the inscription reference has already been made. The inscription employs the numerical figures, 2, 4 and 8.
The language of the inscription is Sanskrit. There is, however, Prakrit influence in the name Sriyadēvi (lines 11, 40) as well as in the word sriya standing for Sanskrit fri in line 10. With the exception of the four imprecatory verses at the end, the entire record is in prose. As regards orthography, little calls for special mention besides the reduplication of dh before y as in bhändäddhyaksha (line 27) and Maddhyadeša (line 16), the preference for the anusvāra to the vargiya nasale in spelling words like kurd-érídu (line 4), samgata (line 9), etc., the occasional reduplication of certain consonants after and the non-observance of the rule of sandhi as, for instance, in deviArticētvarao in lines 39-40.
1 CH.J. R. A. 8. B., Letters, Vol. XIV, pp. 116-16. • This insoription will also be published in the Epigraphia Indica.
