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No. 50] TWO INSCRIPTIONS FROM KELGA
321 No. 50-TWO INSCRIPTIONS FROM KELGA
D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND The late Mr. B.C. Mazumdar published in this journal, Vol. XII, pp. 237 ff., a paper entitled Sonpur Plates of Kumāra Sömēsvaradēva'. The plates were found buried in a field in the village of Kelg in the Uttara-tira division (i.e., the Northern Bank' division lying to the north or left of the Mahanadi) in the old Sonepur State in Orissa. There were altogether four copper plates strung on & copper ring to which a brass seal of the shape of a double-petalled lotus was found soldered. The ring was, however, found out out and Mazumdar believed that two of the four plates were forged and substituted in the original document at a later date. Three of the plates, marked A, B and C by Mazumdar, were found to be of the same size and were supposed to bear fragments of a partially forged charter of the Sõmavami prince Sõmēśvara, while the fourth plate, slightly smaller in size than the other three plates and marked D by Mazumdar, was supposed to record a forged supplementary grant in favour of the son of the donee of Sõmēsvara's charter. Mazumdar suggested that Sõmēsvara's charter consisted originally of four plates engraved on one side only, but in the place of the second and the fourth plates-now missing, two plates engraved on both sides were substituted, and one concluding line was attempted unsuccessfully to be engraved on the reversa side of the plate which was originally the third plate. He further observed, "When the original grant was first tampered with, the ring was cut open, and the plate C and another new forged plate (subsequently removed) must have been put in." The reasons for these changes or forgery are not of course now apparent. In a note on the above observations of Mazumdar, the late Dr. Ston Konow, the then editor of the Epigraphia Indica, suggested that probably the original charter was written on three plates of which one, inscribed on both the sides, was missing. This was because Mazumdar's suggestion regarding all the four plates being originally written on the obverse only was palpably improbable.
The said plates are now preserved in the Asutosh Museum of Indian Art attached to the University of Calcutta, and I had an opportunity of examining them through the kindness of Mr. D. P. Ghosh, Curator of that Museum. On a careful examination of the plates, it is found that the observations on them, referred to above, are mostly wrong. It was an unfortunate mistake to believe that Sõmēsvara's charter is incomplete and partially forged. There is absolutely no doubt that the three plates of equal size, marked A, B and C by Mazumdar, form a complete charter issued by the Sõmavamới Sõmēsvara, although they were wrongly arranged. Mazumlar's C is actually the second or middle one of the three plates on which the whole document was engravad. Both Mazumdar and Sten Konow failed to realise that the inscription on the obverse of Plate B (really Plate III) is a continuation of that on the reverse of Plate C (actually Plate II). This is because the laat word of the last line on the reverse of Plate C (Plate II) was read as prativastavyan and the first three letters of the first line on the obverse of Plate B (Plate III) as vibhit-cha, without noticing that, after prativastavyan, the letter bhā was really engraved so that the last letter on the reverso of Plate C (Plate II) and the first three aksharas on the obverse of Plate B (Plate III) have to be road continuously as bhāvibhis-cha. In other records of the Sõmavamsi kings also the word prativastavyan is found to be followed by the expression bhāvibhit-cha, although the word iti was usually put between them. The suggestion that the original document was written on one side each of four plates is therefore entirely wrong. The charter is a three-plate record, called tri-phali-tāmra
āsana in Sõmavasi documents. The first plate is engraved only on the inner side. The second and third plates have writing on both the sides, although the reverse of the third plate contains only one line of inscription.
1 Soo above, Vol. III, p. 343 (text, line 23), p. 348 (text, line 16), p. 353 (toxt, lines 40-41). p. 357 (text, line 46), Vol. XI, p. 94 (text, line 17), p. 97 (text, line 21); 1. H.Q., Vol. XX, p. 247 (text, line 24), p. 248 (text, lines 17-18), oto., eto.
DGA
