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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
(VOL. XXX No. 45–TERASINGHA PLATES OF TUSHTIKARA
(1 Plate)
D. C. SIBCAR, OOTACAMUND The village of Teräsingha (sometimes also called Tersinga) lies on the southern bank of the river Tel in the Madanpur-Rampur Zamindary of the old Kalahandi State, the present Kalahandi District of Orissa. The set of copper plates, which forms the subject of the present article, was discovered near the bank of the Tel by some cowherd boys of Teräsinghã in the latter half of the year 1947. The plates are now in the possession of the Maharaja of Kalahandi.
Mr. Satyanārāyaṇa Rājaguru secured the plates for examination in October 1947 and published his reading and interpretation of the inscription in the Journal of the Kalinga Historical Research Society, Vol. II, Nos. 2-3, 1947, pp. 107 ff. and Plates. Unfortunately Mr. Rajaguru's treatment of the epigraph is not quite satisfactory. In April 1948, the office of the Government Epigraphist for India received a set of impressions of the plates from Mr. K. N. Mahāpātra of Kalahandi and, in the month of December of the same year, secured the original plates for examination through the Superintendent, Department of Archaeology, Eastern Circle, Calcutta. Besides the excellent impressions of the plates then prepared and now preserved in the office of the Government Epigraphist for India, I had, in 1952, an opportunity of examining also the original record through the kindness of the Maharaja of Kalahandi.
This is a set of three small and thin plates each measuring 5.9 inches by 1.6 inches. The plates are strung together on a rather thin ring to which, however, the seal is not soldered in the usual fashion. The purpose of the seal has been served by flattening a portion of the ring into a small rectangle which bears the legend sri-Tushţikāraḥ. The three plates together weigh 12 Lolas while the weight of the ring is only 14 tolas,
The characters belong to the Kalinga variety of the Southern Alphabet and the epigraph may be assigned, on palaeographic grounds, to the first half of the sixth century A.D. The alphabet resembles closely that of the early charters of the Ganga kings of Kalinganagara and Dantapura such, e.g. as the Jirjingi platest of king Indravarman I, dated in the Ganga year 39 falling in 535-37 A. D. An interesting feature of the record is that the main document (fifteen lines) is engraved on the inner side of the first plate, both sides of the second plate and the inner side of the third plate, while there are some slightly later additions on the outer sides of the first and third plates 88 well as at the end of the original charter on the inner side of the last plate. The characters of the additional writing on the third plate closely resemble those of the original document; but the lines on the outer side of the first plate, which represent a complete endorsement in four lines, are written in box-headed characters which exhibit utter carelessness on the part of the scribe and engraver. The language of the original document as well as of the additional matter is Sanskrit.; but while the number of mistakes in the former is not many, the latter is full of errors. In point of orthography, the original charter resembles other records of the Eastern Deccan belonging to the sixth and seventh centuries. The inscription bears no date.
The main charter was issued from Tarabhramaraka by Mahārāja Tushţikāra, who was & devotee of Stambhēśvari. It records the king's order addressed to the agriculturist householders of Prastara-vātaka relating to the grant of the said väțaka (literally,' an enclosure', 'a garden' or 'a plantation, but in the present case possibly a small hamlet') as a permanent agrahāra in favour of a Brāhmaṇa of the Kāšyspa götra, named Arya-Dronašarman. The inhabitants of
1 JAHRS, Vol. III, p. 51 and Plates ; Vol. VII, 229. The characters of the record under study appear to be earlier than those of the Urlam plates of Hastiverman, dated Ganga year 80 (576-78 A.D.). See above, Vol. XVIL. pp. 330 ff. and Plates.
