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No. 34-MUDHOL PLATES OF PUGAVARMAN
(1 Plate)
P. B. DESAI, DHARWAR - In May 1949, this set of copper-plates was received for examination in the office of the Government Epigrapbist for India from Shri R. S. Panchamukhi, the then Director of Kannada Research, Dharwar. The plates were originally in the possession of a shepherd belonging to a village in the present Mudhol Taluk of the Bijapur District. They were handed over to Shri V. C. Garwad, District Judge at Mudhol, who passed them on to Shri Panchamukhi in 1943. Shri Panchamukhi has edited the inscription on the plates in his Progress of Kannada Research in Bombay Province, 1941-46, pp. 12 and 69 ff. and plate IV. The epigraph is briefly noticed in the Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy for 1949-50, p. 2 and registered as No. 7 of Appendix A. I edit the record here with the kind permission of the Government Epigraphist for India.
The set comprises two copper-plates held together by a circular ring with seal. The rims of the plates are not raised. The first plate is engraved on the inner side only, while the second on both the sides. The plates measure each 5*" in length, 2 in breadth and is in thickness. The ring which is 27" in diameter passes through a circular hole, f" in diameter. The ends of the ring are soldered into the bottom of a thick oval seal having a rim. The seal which measures t' by 1 contains in the sunken surface a standing human figure with its right hand raised. The ring and the seal together weigh 9 tolas and the whole set weighs 25 tolas..
The epigraph is on the whole in a fair state of preservation, although a few letters in lines 1, 7 and 8 are damaged. It contains 12 lines of writing, which are distributed evenly on the three inscribed faces of the plates. Line 8 continues about half the distance, the remaining space being left blank probably due to its narrowness. No punctuation marks are used anywhere in the writing. Some letters are omitted through oversight, while engraving, as in lines 1, 6 and 11. The writing contains a few other scribal errors.
The characters belong to the southern class of alphabet with archaic traits, having in a majority of instances small hollow boxheads. They may be compared for general resemblance with some records of the early Kadamba family. The initial vowels u and ai are inet with in lines 10 and 7 respectively. Medial i and i are not distinguished, both represented by a circle at the top of the letter. Jihvamüliya occurs once in brahmanak-krama in line 2.
1 The inscription has also been noticed by Dr. D C. Siroar in Prof. P. Sundaram Pillai Com. Vol., 1957, Pp. 96-97.
Shri Panchamukhi has tried to identify this figure, not without diffidence, as the deity Hanuman (Prog. of Kan. Res., op. cit., p. 69). But his arguments are far from convincing. Although it is very difficult to ascertain the identity of the figure on account of its badly worn out condition, ono may possibly suggest that originally it may have been intended to represent the god Várāhidēva in whose favour the charter purports to record a gift.
For example, the Bannahalli plates of Krishṇavarman II (abovo, Vol. V, Plato facing p. 18) and the Halai plates of Harivarman (Ind. Ant., Vol. VI, Plate facing p. 32).
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