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236 EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[Vol. XXVIII examination of the inscription from both the original plates and the impressions, I personally carried the plates to Cuttack, where I had to attend the Indian History Congress in December 1949, and handed them over to Mr. Acharya. At Cuttack I came to learn that the plates belonged to Mr. Harekrishna Mahatab, then Chief Minister of Orissa. Considering the importance of the inscription I requested Mr. Mahatab in March 1950 to be so good as to permit me to edit it in the Epigraphin Indica. I also requested Mr. Mahatab to supply me with details of the discovery of the plates, which could be incorporated in my paper on the subject. In a letter, dated the 15th March, 1950, Mr. Mahatab kindly agreed to my editing the inscription and also furnished me with the following story of its discovery. "The set of plates," Mr. Mahatab wrote to me, "was recovered in a village called Nagari about eleven miles from the town of Cuttack. The villagers were sinking a well and the copper plates were found about six feet below the surface level. As soon as the villagers found the set out, somehow it struck them to present the plates to me. They could have easily disposed them of and got a good sum as the value of the copper ; but instead they came all the way and presented the plates to me in my office. I offered to pay them Rs. 100 which too they declined and expressed the desire that the amount should be spent for som- public work in their village. Recently I went to the village. Near about it there are traces of ancient structures. Probably it was at one time a prosperous town as the name Nagari of the village implies." I am very grateful to Mr. Mahatab for his kindness in allowing me to publish the Nagari plates. Thanks are also due to the villagers of Nagari whose good sense saved the plates from being lost to the students of Indian epigraphy and history.
The set consists of Ave plates each measuring 12.6 inches by 7-9 inches. They are held together by & ring to which a soal, resembling those attached to other imperial Ganga records, is soldered. The thickness of the ring is .7 inch and it passes through a ring-hole which is l'inch in diameter. The seal, which is 3.5 inches in diameter, has the form of an expanded lotus or a radiating sun-dial and has in the centro an embossed figure of a seated bull, caparisoned and bedecked with ornaments, facing front and having raised neck and head. To the proper left of the bull are found the emblems of a conch, the crescent moon, a dagger pointed downwards and a damars. To the right of the bull are similarly found a trisula and an ankuša or a chamara. In front of the bull there is an emblem possibly representing the solar orb. The plates have raised rims for the protection of the writing. The first plate is written on the inner side only, the rest being engraved on both the sides. There are altogether 156 lines of writing. The first side of the third plate has 17 lines, the first sides of the fourth and fifth plates 19 lines each and the second side of The fifth plate only 11 lines. All other inscribed sides have 18 lines each. The writing is wellpreserved with the exception of a few slightly damaged passages on the second side of the last plate. The aksharas are deeply incised and measure about 4 inch in height. The plates alone weigh 596 tolas while the weight of the ring and the seal is 111 tolas.
The characters belong to the class usually termed proto-Bengali, although a more appropriate name of the script ought to ba Gaudi. Many of the letters have developed Bengali forms of the thirteenth century; but there are a few traces of Oriya (of. medial i sign in khi in line 4, si in line 44 and ni in line 94) and Dovanagari (of. medial sign in dho in line 41 and medial 1 sign in bhu in line 104) influence. An interesting fact about the palaeography of the inscription under discussion is that there are many cases in which different aksharas are indicated by the game or similar aigos. Thus there is absolutely no approciable differenca between tú and fa, between tva (cf. also cases where it looks liko ty) and rtha, and between dga and dga (cf. also nga which has only an additional loop at the top right end). Hu has the ordinary sign for medial u in a few cases (cf. line 95); but it in often indistinguishable from the sign for hva (cf. lines 11, 12, 18, 19, 69, 78, etc.).
For the literary style, dialect and soript of Gauda or Eastern India, see A. 1. 0. C. Summary of Papers Lucknow, 1961, p. 177.
