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No. 7)
BANGAON PLATE OF VIGRAHAPALA III; REGNAL YEAR 17
51
follow in lines 47-49 speak of the duta or dutaka (i.e., the executor of the grant) and the engraver of the plate in the usual style of the charters of Vigraha pāla III. What is, however, very interesting in our record is that its data is said to have been the mantrin Prahasitarăja described as a Bon of the king. Why, in the name of this as yet unknown son of Vigrahapala III, the ending rāja has been preferred to the expected pāla cannot be determined. The engraver of the plate was the artisan Sasidova who was the son of Hridēva hailing from Poshali. We know that several engravers of the Pala plates hailed from the same village. Indeed the same verse algo occurs at the end of the Amgāchhi plate where, however, Sasidēva is called Mahidharadēva-sūnu instead of Sriman-Hridera-sünn. The passage in our record is, however, grammatically wrong and requires some modification. Whether the reading intended is fri-Mahidevao cannot be determined, although in such a case Mahidharadēva and Mahidēva may have been regarded as identical.
An interesting feature of the charter under discussion is the peculiar endorsement in two verses at the end (lines 49-50). According to this, the real donor of the land was not, as recorded in the grant, the king but one of his Brāhmana officers, named Ghanţisa. This man is described as a vidhiya or servant of the lord of Gauda, i.e., the Pāla king, and as having friendship with several rulers. He is said to have made the grant out of his own hala, probably meaning the jāgir under his possession. Ghantīsa was the son of Yogēśvara and the grandson of Vivada. This Vivada is Buid to have been born of Iddhahalā, daughter of Gõhaņaka and granddaughter of Kachchha who came [to Tirabhukti or North Bihār] from Krõdāñcha. There is no doubt that Krödāñcha is the same as Kölāñcha mentioned earlier in the inscription as the original home of Ghäntūkasarman, donee of the grant. The nature of the present grant seems to be similar to that of such records as the Kailan (otherwise called Kailain) plate, according to which an officer of a king got a piece of land (probably by purchase) from his master and parts of it were granted in favour of certain learned Brāhmaṇas and of a Buddhist religious establishment. In the present case, the king merely permitted and ratified the grant making the gift land a permanent revenue-free holding.
Besides the mention of a new Pāla jaya-skandhāvāra and a hitherto unknown son of Vigrahapāla III serving as a minister of his father, and tha interesting nature of the grant actually made by a private individual but represented as a royal gift because the king made the land a rent-free holding, a fact of considerable importance in the Bangaon plate is its date. So long, the latest definitely known date of the reign of this king was his 12th regnal year. Of course there were the Kurkihär image inscriptions, dated in the 19th regnal year of Vigrahapāla, and a manuscript of the Pancharakshā copied in the 26th year of his reign. But it was not known whether these dates should have to be referred to Vigrahapāla III or his great-grandfather Vigrahapāla II. The recently discovered Naulāgarh image inscription, dated in the 24th regnal year of Vigrahapala. without any indication in regard to his identity, also did not solve the problem. Thus the position was that, while Vigrahapāla III was known to have ruled at least for about 12 years, either the same king or Vigrahapāla II may have ruled at least for about 26 years. Under the circumstances, some writers' assigned to Vigrahapāla II a short reign of less than one year but to Vigrahapāla III a long reign of about 26 years, while others assigned the long reign-period to Vigrahn pāla II. In
1 Was it due to the fact that Prahasitaraja was born of a concubine of king Vigrahapāla III ? 11. H. 9., Vol. XXIII, pp. 221-41. • History of Bengal, op. cit., p. 174; Bhandarkar, List, No. 1632.
J. B. O. R. S., Vol. XVI, pp. 36 f., 239 f.; History of Bengal, loc. cit. • History of Bengal, op. cit., p. 179. • Ganesh Datta College Bulletin, No. 1, pp. 1-16; J.B.R.S., Vol. XXXVII, parta 3-4, pp. 1 ff.
Ray (1). H. N. I., Vol., I. p. 385) assigns Vigrahapale II to circa 992 A.C. and Vigrahapala III to circa 1055-81 A.C. * Majumdar (Hist. Beng., op. cit., p. 177) assigns Vigrahapala II to circa 960-88 A.C. and Vigrahapala III to
circa 1055-70 A.C.
