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No. 28-BHATURIYA INSCRIPTION OF RAJYAPALA
(1 Plate) D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND
(Received on 31.5.1958) The stone slab bearing the inscription under study was recovered from the mosque at Bhāturiya, about 20 miles from Rajshahi, headquarters of the District of that name in East Pakistan, by Mirza Mokhtaruddin Ahmad, Superintendent of Police, Rajshahi. It was presented to the Museum of the Varendra Research Society at Rajshahi in August 1954. The inscription was published by Mr. Siva Prasanna Lahiry in the Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXXI, No. 3 (September 1955), pp. 215-31, without any illustration. Recently I received a photograph of the epigraph from the authorities of the Varendra Research Society. On an examination of the record, it was found that there are many errors in Mr. Lahiry's transcript and translation of the document while his conclusions in regard to its historical importance are in several cases mere unwarranted speculations.
The inscribed slab is stated to measure between 19 and 194 inches in length and between · 114 and 113 inches in height. The space occupied by the writing is about
187 inches long and 10 inches high. Individual aksharas are about inch in height. There are altogether 20 lines in the record. The last line, which is nearly 13 inches long and is thus shorter than the other lines, has been incised in a central position leaving & space of a little above 24 inches at the beginning of the line and about. 34 inches at its end. The letters are carefully and beautifully engraved and the preservation of the writing is satisfactory, though some letters are slightly rubbed off in the central area of the left half of the inscribed surface.
The characters belong to the Gaudiya or East Indian alphabet of about the tenth century A.D. and closely resemble those of the contemporary records of the Pala kings of Bengal and Bihar. Of initial vowels, a (lines 2, 14, 16, 18), ā (line 13), i (lines 6, 20) and ē (line 19) occur in the inscription.
The sign for v has been used to indicate b. The letter has three forms, viz. endowed with the amätra-like sign (cf. mukuta in line 2), with a short stroke in the place of the said sign (cf. Attao and oddhatta in line 2, Karnnāta in line 11) and without the sign in question (kapaļaih in line 10, Läțail in line 11. palla in line 20). There is no appreciable difference between p and y and between the subscript forms of dh and v. The sign for half nasal called chandrabindu or anunäsika is used in line 11. The language of the inscription is Sanskrit and it is written in verse with the exception of the word svasti preceded by the Siddham symbol at the beginning in line 1. It is a prasasti or eulogy in 15 stanzas composed in various metres. The author's style is simple. As regards orthographical peculiarities, there are some cases of the use of class nasals in the place of anus vāra and a few cases of visarga-sandhi as in ajñaś=sirõbhih (lines 11-12) and aropita s-Sankara) (line 16). Anusvāra instead of final m has been used at the end of the halves of stanzas while final m has not been changed to anusvāra before v. Some consonants have been reduplicated in conjunction with the preceding . In line 18, the word jātu has been wrongly written as yātu.
The inscription bears no date. But it records a grant of king Rajyapala no doubt belonging to the celebrated Pāla dynasty of Eastern India. The Pala king Räjyapāla ruled in the first half of the tenth century and his reign period may be roughly assigned to c. 911-35 A.D.
The inscription begins with a stanza (verse 1) in lines 1-2, which is in adoration of the god Sambhu (Siva). Verse 2 (lines 2-3) introduces a locality called Attamūla which was the home of
(150.)
