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No. 17-BONDA PLATES OF MAHASIVA TIVARA, YEAR 5
(1 Plate) D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND
(Received on 12. 8. 1959)
The inscription published in the following pages was discovered by one Göszi Rām Rāwat on the 6th May 1959 while he was digging for the foundation of a house at the village of Bondā in the barangarh Tahsil of the recently formed Raigarh District in the Chhattisgarh Division of Madhya Pradesh. Bõnda lies near Bälpur on the left bank of the Mahānadi, 20 miles to the south of Raigarh, headquarters of the District of that name. Pandit L. P. Pandeya secured the record on the 27th June 1959 and soon afterwards sent it for examination to the Government Epigraphist for India. It is a copper-plate grant of the Panduvamsi king Tivara of South Kosala, two of whose charters have already been published. The first of these two records is the Räjim (Raipur District) plates issued by the king on the 8th day of Kārttika in his seventh regnal year. It was published by J. F. Fleet in Corp. Ins. Ind.. Vol. III, pp. 291 ff., Plate XLV. Unfortunately, Fleet misinterpreted some passages of the inscription and came to the unwarranted conclusions that Tivara was an adapted son of Nannadēva, that he was a feudatory ruler whose overlord is vaguely referred to in the epigraph and that the record endows him with the subordinate title Prāpta-pañcha-mahasabda. The second of the two published epigraphs of Tivara is the Balodā (Raipur District) plates issued on the 27th day of Jyēshtha in Tivara's ninth regnal year. It was edited by E. Hultzsch in the pages of this journal, Vol. VII, pp. 104 ff., Plates. Hultzsch's interpretation of the inscription removed the misconceptions introduced by Fleet.
The inscription under study, which is the third of the copper-plate grants of Tivara so far discovered, is written on & set of three plates, the first and third of which are inscribed only on the inner side and the second on both the sides. The plates are each 8.95 inches in length and 5.42 inches in height in the middle, their sides being slightly less in length and height. The corners of the plates are a little rounded off. The plates are strung on a copper ring measuring about 4 inch in thickness and about 4.5 inches in diameter. A circular bronze seal is affixed to the joint of the ring. As in the case of the Räjim and Balodā plates, the central area of the counter-sunk surface of the seal, which is 3.2 inches in diameter and whose circular border is considerably raised, contains the legend. It is the already known stanza in Anushţubh arranged in two lines and speaks of the permanent charter of king Tīvaradēva of Kosala, no doubt with reference to the grant recorded on the plates to which it is affixed. There is a floral device below the legend, while the upper part of the surface of the seal, separated from the legend by two horizontal straight lines, contains, in the centre, the figure of seated Garuda with outspread wings and holding a serpent with raised hood in each of his two hands. In the proper right and left of Garuda, there are respectively the chakra (discus) and the sankha (conch-shell), both associated with the god Vishnu, Garuda being the same god's vāhana. The weight of the three plates together is 148 tolas while that of the ring with the seal is 771 tolas. In general appearance, the plates and the seal resemble those of the published records of king Tivara.
1 These plates are still preserved in the Rājivalochana temple at Räjim.
* The village lies in the Phuljhar Zamindari area which formed a part of the Sambalpur District of Orissa till 1905.
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