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No. 16]
INSCRIPTIONS FROM BIHAR Paramabhatāraka-Mahārājādhirāja-Paramēšvara Vishņugupta, during whose reign the inscription was engraved, seems to be no other than the king of that name belonging to the 80called 'Later Gupta' dynasty. Vishnugupta was the son of Dēvagupta (from Kamaladēvi) and grandson of Adityasēna. Of Adityasēna's time, we have the Shāhpur (Pāțnā District) inscription dated in year 66 of the Harsha era corresponding to 672 A.D. as well as the undated Apbsada (Gaya District) and Mandār hill' (Bhagalpur District) inscriptions. Vishnugupta's son from Ijjādēvi was Jivitagupta II who is the last known monarch of the dynasty. For this king's reign we have only the Deo-Baranárk (Arrah, Shāhābād District) inscription. So far only one record of Vishnugupta's time has been discovered. It is, as already referred to above, the Mangraon (Shāhābād District) stone inscription dated in his seventeenth regnal year. The importance of the inscription under review lies in the fact that it is the first. Later Gupta'epigraph discovered in the Hazārībāg District and the second of Vishnugupta's records so far brought to light. As king Vishnugupta must have flourished about the beginning of the eighth century, the inscription helps us in assigning a date to some of the ancient relies on the Kaulēsvari bill.
D. An Inscribed Terracotta Plaque
A terracotta plaque was received by me for examination from Mr. Radha Krishna Choudhary, Professor of History in the Ganesh Dutt College at Begusarai in the Monghyr District. The plaque is stated to have been presented to Mr. Choudhary & few years ago by one of his pupils, who hailed from a village under the Teghra Police Station of the Begusarai Subdivision. Unfortunately its actual findspot and the story of its discovery are unknown. The plaque is semicircular in shape and has a flat obverse and raised reverse. The base of the semicircle is about 21 inches long while its bisector is about 14 inches in length. There are four or probably five lines of writing engraved on the obverse of the plaque while two lines, impressed by means of a Bealing, are noticed on its reverse. A few letters from the right end of the inscription on the obverse have broken away. My reading and interpretation of the record are published in the following lines with Mr. Choudhary's permission.
The characters employed in the inscription on the obverse of the plaque belong to a cursive form of the Gaudiya alphabet while those in the writing on the reverse have the standard forms of the letters of the same script. It is obvious that the two lines of writing on the reverse were impressed on the plaque when the clay was quite soft before it had dried up or had been baked in the sun. An examination of the letters of the inscription on the obverse shows that they were engraved before the plaque had been burnt in fire. It is not certain whether this record was engraved when the clay was still a little soft or it had already quite hardened as a result of baking in the sun, although an examination of the engraving appears to support the first alternative. In any case, there could not have been a long interval between the impressing of the sealing on the reverse of the plaque and the engraving of the inscription on its obverse. But there is no doubt that the record on the reverse is earlier, at least by a few hours, than the epigraph on the obverse.
The cursive Gaudiya characters of the inscription on the obverse of the plaque resemble in some respects the letters of the modern Bengali and Maithili alphabets. On palaeographical grounds, the record may be assigned to the thirteenth or fourteenth century A.D., although, as will be seen below, the date quoted in it appears to point to the last quarter of the twelfth century.
CIT, Vol. III, p. 210. * Ibid., pp. 202 ff. * Ibid., p. 212. • Ibid., pp. 216 ff.
