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264 EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[VOL. XXVIII No. 42–JABALPUR PLATES OF MAHARAJA HASTIN ; G. E. 170
(1 Plate)
RAJ BALI PANDEY, BANARAS The two copper plates, bearing a royal charter which is being published here, were found in & village between Rewa and Satna in the Vindhya Pradesh by a worker in R. M. S. and were handed over to Muni Kantisagar Ji, a distinguished Jain scholar who mostly resides at Jabalpur and is interested in archaeology. Their present whereabouts are not known. He took photographs of the plates and sent one set of them to Dr. A. S. Altekar, who kindly forwarded it to me for editing and publishing the charter in the Epigraphia Indica.
The copper plates, as already pointed out, are two in number and are inscribed on one side only. They measure 8' in length and 41' in breadth. They weigh it seers each. The edges are thicker than the main sheets on which the charter is inscribed. This device was made in order to protect the letters from the rubbing of plates. But this circumstance could not prevent at least some letters from being damaged, specially on the second plate. There is a hole in the middle of the upper side of both the plates, which obviously suggests that the plates were fastened together by a ring, which passed through the hole and the ends of which were joined together by a seal bearing the emblem of the grantor. The ring and the seal have, however, not been recovered. But, one oan see at the bottom of the second plate that there is an imprint of en oval seal bearing the legend Srihastiräjfah. No other published charter of Hastin bears a seal imprinted at this place. The present seal like the other seals of this ruler is oval in shape but its legend is rather short. On other seals the legend reada, Srimahārājahastinah.
The language of the charter is Sanskrit. There are some mistakes due to the scribe, e.g., kulOpannëna for kul-Otpannëna (line 3), kõl-ontarëshu for kāl-āntarēshu (line 17), and savasntäta for sarvasnāta (line 22). The inscription is written in prose except the verses at the end quoted from the Mahābhārata (lines 19-22).
The characters belong to the eastern variety of the Gupta script and they differ from the nailheaded letters found in the Majhagawan plates of Hastin. There are only a few orthographical peculiarties to be noted. Phālguna is spelt, as in many other early inscriptions, with.na (line 2). The anusvāra in Pañchanyāni is retained and not converted into m, though it is followed by a vowel a (line 3). The anusvara in asyāṁ is converted into n before d (line 3). N is used instead of använa in the word vansa (line 6). A consonant following ris doubled as in puruvāyām (line 3).
The object of the inscription is to record the grant of a village with all its assets and its bonndaries properly demarcated, to a number of Brāhmaṇa grantees by Mahārāja Hastin in the year seventy increased by hundred (170) on the Afth day of the bright halt of the month of Phálguna.
After the syllable om, the charter opens with a salutation to Mahādēva, indicating the Saivite faith of the Parivräjaka family of kings. The year seventy increased by hundred is referred to the Gupta Era as clearly suggested by the expression Gupta-ntipa-rajyabhuktau. The year fell within the Mehājyështha samvatsara of the twelve year cycle of Jupiter, which lasted from G. E. 166 to
The Muni sent ono set of the photographs also to me in July 1949. Subsequently he published detoription of it in the Hindi monthly Jidnodaya, Kiti, for November 1951, pp. 367.386, along with a tentative traipt of the insoription and note by me.Ed.]
[See below p 266, n l-Ed.) Phot, c. 1. I., VOL. III, pp. 106 L.
