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No. 38-THREE PLATES FROM PANDUKESVAR
(2 Platos)
D. C. SIROAR, OOTACAMUND As noticed by A. Führer in his Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, 1891, p. 46, there are four inscribed copper plates preserved in the temple of Yöga-badari (ope of the Pancha-badari) at Pandukēsvar (lat. 30° 19' 56"N., long. 79° 35' 30'E.), 54 miles north-east of Srinagar, in the Garhwal District of the Kumaun Division of Uttar Pradesh. A tentative translation of the inscriptions was published in 1876 by E.T. Atkinson in a collection of inscriptions from the temples of Kumaun and Garhwal and circulated with a view to securing information about the identification of the places and personages mentioned in them. The text of only one of these records was later edited by R. L. Mitra in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1877, pp. 71 ff., with a photolithograph. As, however, the work was not done quite satisfactorily. F. Kielhorn afterwards re-edited the inscription in the Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXV, 1896, pp. 177 ff. A detailed analysis of six records from Kumaun and Garhwal including the above inscriptions was also published by Atkinson in The Himalayan Districts of the NorthWestern Provinces of India, Vol. II (forming Vol. XI of the Gazetteer, N.-W.P.), 1884, pp. 469-85. But the analysis was based on inaccurate transcripts of the original records. Some years ago, information reached the Government Epigraphist for India that impressions of all the four Pāndukēsvar copper-plate inscriptions had been secured for the Luoknow Museum. At his request, the Curator of the Lucknow Museum sent the impressions to the Government Epigraphist's office for examination and transcription. The three unpublished inscriptions out of the four are edited below.
1. Plate of Lalitaburadöva, Year 22 This is a single plate engraved only on one side. It measures about 24:4" x 15.6" excluding & projection (with a squarish hole in it) about 4 long on the proper right side. The royal seal appears to have been originally fixed on this projection as is the case with the Pāndukēsvar plate of the same king published by Mitra and Kielhorn. We know that the seal of this king had on a counter-sunk surface the figure of a couchant bull facing the proper left with a legend in three lines (mentioning the reigning monarch together with his father and grandfather) beneath it. There are altogether twentyeight lines of writing on the plate under discussion, the size of each akshara being about .4" X 4'. The engraving seems to be deep and carefully executed and the writing is apparently in a satisfactory state of preservation.
The characters belong to the Northern Class of alphabets of about the ninth century and are the same as those used in the published copper-plate inscription from Pāndukēsvar. The use of initial à and i and final t are noticed in the record. The upadhmaniya is employed in line 3. B has always been denoted by the sign for v. In line 25 there occur the ordinary numerical figures for 1, 2 and 5. The language of the inscription is Sanskrit. With the exception of five imprecatory verses at the end, the record is written entirely in prose which exhibits in a considerable degree the quality of ojas or samāsa-bhūyastva. In respect of orthography, the inscription closely resembles the published record of the king, referred to above, and some other epigraphs of the period. Some of the consonants are reduplicated in conjunction with . The anusvāra is wrongly used in some cases for the final m which, however, is usually retained before v. The dental nasal has been used for the anusvära in anyāns cha in line 16. Sh has been used in place of 6 in Khasha in line 15 and 6 instead of in ®ā sēdha in line 13, while i is found instead of i ip 'tkirana in line 25. The word sahasrani is written correctly in line 27 but is found in the form bahashrani in the previous line.
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