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297
No. 47]
DUBI PLATES OF BHASKARAVARMAN The friendship between Harshavardhana and Bhaskara varman contracted in 606 A.D. with a view to humbling the power of king Sasärka of Gauda ultimately led to their joint viotory over Gauda sometime after the death of Sasanks who was ruling as late as 619 A.D. over wide regions of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Nidhanpur charter of Bhaskaravarman was issued from his camp at Karņasuvarna, the capital of the Gauda kingdom, in the present Murshidabad District of West Bengal, when the two friends were apparently engaged in besieging the Gauda capital, This event has been ascribed by some writers to a date between 638 and 642 A.D. There is no mention in that record of the Gauda invasion of Kāmarūpa during Bhaskaravarman's youth. The reference to this event in the present charter may suggest that the Dabi plates were issued when the memory of Bhāskara's sucoess in throwing off the Gauda yoke was not dimmed by the lapse of many years and by the subsequent military successes of the Kämarūpa king. The date of this record may, therefore, be tentatively assigned to the earlier part of Bhāskaravarman's reign.
It has been observed that the extant portion of the inscription before us does not speak of the locality which presumably was granted by the present charter. There is, however, mention of the old capital of the family and the new capital built by Sthiravarman without specifying their names. We have already discussed their probable location. In the legend on the seal, Pushyavarman is described as the lord of Pragjyotisha, which, together with the later Kamarūpa, was the name applied to the dominons of the early kings of Assam. The heart of the country was the Gauhati region of Assam, but it extended upto the river Karatöya in the east. Gauda was the name both of a people and of the country inhabited by them. A late tradition seems to suggest that, in the narrow sense, Gauda indicated only the small area lying to the south of the Padmă and the north of the Burdwan region in South-west Bengal, although it seems that originally the course of the Padmā lay to the north of the present locality called Gaur (Gauda) in the south of the Malda District. Thus the present District of Murshidabad together with the southern part of Malda may have been the original Gauda. At the time of our inscription, however, Gauda seems to have indicated the entire dominions of the Gauda kings. At a later date the name Gauda was applied to the whole of the western half of Bengal and still later to the entire Bengali-speaking area."
TEXT: [Metres : verses 1, 13, 22 Vaṁsasthavila ; verses 2, 37, 50-53, 55, 58, 62, 67, 68, 70, 75 Sārdulavikridita ; verse 3 Upajāti (Indravajra-Vasasthavila); verses 4, 6, 9, 11, 18, 20, 28, 49, 57 Upajāti (Indravajra-Upendravajra); verses 5, 15, 40 U pajāti (Indravar sa-Vam sasthavila); verses 7, 8, 10, 12, 17, 25, 27, 29, 32-36, 41-48, 59, 61, 65 Anushțubh; verses 14, 16, 56 Indravar dä; verses 19, 26, 30, 76 Indravajrā; verse 21 Upendravajrā; verse 23 Upajāti (Upendravajra-Indravamsā); verses 31, 66, 69, 73, 74 Sragdhara ; verse 39 Upajäti (Indravam sa-Indravajra); verse 54 Mandakrāntā; verses 60, 64 Aryā; verses 63, 71 Vasantatilaka ; verse 72 Sikhariņi.]
First Plate 1 'Prana[mya dēvan basisēkharaṁ priyan Pinākinam bhasma-kaņair=vibhushitam(tam )
vibhūta]'ye bhūtimatsām)
1 History of Bengal, op. cit. p. 78. * Cf. Ind. Cult., Vol. VIII, pp. 56-57.
* From the original plates kindly lent by Mr. P. P. Chaudhury, Curator of the Assam State Museum, Gauhati, And from impressions and photographs prepared at the office of the Government Epigraphist for India, Ootacamund. I am indebted to Dr. B. Ch. Chhabra and Mr. P. B. Desai for some suggestions. The errors in the published transcript of the record have not been indicated here.
• There is no trace of the symbol for Siddham at the beginning of the line.
Most of the aksharas placed within square brackets in this line and in the following lines are totally lost. The lost aksharas in verse 1 have heen restored from the Nidhanpur copper-plate inscription of Bhaskara varman, wbich also begins with the same stanza.
