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No. 30]
CHARTER OF VISHNUSHENA, SAMVAT 649
163
We may now turn to the standing figure of a two-armed deity' against the elaborate wheel on the seal of the charter. Well, we have here an instance of the representation of the personification of Vishnu's mighty weapon, the Sudarsana discus, called Chakrapurusha.
We are now in a position to say that the best specimen of the Chakrapurusha representation occurs in the Chakra-Vikrama type of gold coins of the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II. The credit of its identification goes to Sri C. Sivaramamurti and Dr. V. S. Agrawala. The latter has quoted extensively from the Ahirbudhnya-samhita, a well-known text of the Pañcharatra Agama, roughly assignable to the Gupta period. This work is essentially the glorification of Lord Vishqu in the form of Chakrapurusha.
It may further be pointed out that the reading Lokanatha in the original is due to conjectural restoration. Trilokanathaḥ may as well fit in. We may supply the missing words and read Jayati Trilokanathaḥ(tho), etc., the meaning remaining the same. It will be interesting to investigate as to how far the ideas expressed in the invocatory stanzas of the Mallasarul charter conform to the contents of the Ahirbudhnya-saṁhitā.
No. 30-CHARTER OF VISHNUSHENA, SAMVAT 649
(1 Plate)
D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND
In the office of the Government Epigraphist for India, Ootacamund, there are two sets of old impressions of an exceedingly interesting copper-plate inscription. I have failed to trace the whereabouts of the original document. An old employee of the office tells me that the impressions were received, together with a number of other estampages, from the office of the Director General of Archaeology in India about 35 years back.
A scrutiny of the impressions shows that the inscription was incised on the inner sides of a set of two rectangular plates of the same size. There are two holes in the lower border of the writing on the first plate and also in its upper border on the second, the lines of writing running lengthwise. The holes were no doubt meant for the rings necessary for holding together the two plates. Two rings were necessary for the rather unusual length of the plates. It has to be noticed in this connection that one of the holes shows a broken part in the impressions of the first side of the inscription, but that there is no trace of a similar break in the corresponding hole in the impressions of the second side. The holes had been made in the plates before the document was incised on them. We know that the use of the inner sides of a set of two copper plates, strung on two rings with one of them having the royal seal soldered on it, for engraving a document, was popular in early times with certain royal families of the western parts of India, such as the Maitraka dynasty of Valabhi in Saurashtra. This fact suggests that the record under study was issued by a ruler of Western India. As will be seen below, this is supported by the internal evidence of the inscription itself.
The impressions show that the size of the plates was 17.2" by 7.3". There are sixteen lines of writing on the impression of the first plate and eighteen lines on that of the second; but the last three lines of the inscription, written in letters of slightly smaller size, record an endorsement and
1 See An Explanation of the Chakravikrama Type Coin of Chandragupta II by V. S. Agrawala in the JNSI, Vol. XVI, 1954, pp. 97-101.
Cf. Trilokadhrit of the Vishnusuhasranama, 95. As Mr. Majumdar has observed, about eight letters are missing before -kanathab. The blank may be filled by reading the Siddham symbol followed by Jayati Trilokanāks. Cf. Corp. Ins. Ind., Vol. III, pp. 164, 172.
