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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[OCTOBER, 1881.
acknowledge that the name of the writer and the date of our grant are an additional argument against its genuineness. But while I thus thinkit necessary to declare the grant spurious, I must add that in my opinion it is not a recent forgery, but dates from 100 to 200 years after Saka Samvat 400. The grounds for this belief are, firstly, the fact that the characters are of the real and genuine Gurjara type; secondly, the fact that the forger knew something about the history of the Gurjara period; and thirdly, the probability that in later times a forger would not have fabricated a grant with the name of a king of the Valabhi dynasty.
As regards the first point, everybody who compares our grant with those of Jayabhata and Dadda II, must acknowledge that what. ever the grant may be, the letters are genuine, and agree with those of the Gurjara princes. Now Indian forgers do not, as a rule, even attempt to imitate an ancient character. But, if they do it, the attempt is of the feeblest kind possible. Nobody who carefully examines the numerous forgeries from Southern India, e.g. the Chera grant dated 159 Saka," the British Museum grant of Pulikesi, dated Saka Saruvat 411,18 or Mr. L. Rice's early Chera grants, published in the Ind. Ant., will easily see that the letters do not belong to the centuries in which the grants are dated. The same remark holds good for the few forgeries found in Gujarat. I may mention, as an instance of this kind, a plate which was sent to me in 1879 for examination by the Assistant Political Agent in charge of Lunâvâ¢â. It bears the name of Jayasimha Siddharaja of Anhilvåd Pathan, but the letters belong to the last century, and the document is full of absurd anachronisms. There are also good reasons why it is almost impossible for a forger to adop' an ancient character or to imitate it successfully.
Firstly, palæography is not a branch of learning which is or ever has been much cultivated in India. Even learned Brahmans can hardly read the ancient literary alphabets of their own provinces. They are utterly unacquainted with the characters used in inscriptions. This state of things seems to be ancient. For
it is indicated by some curious blunders which Hiwen Thsang makes with regard to inscribed monuments. Thus the learned Chinese travel. ler asserts that Tathagata frequently travelled in the kingdom of Valabhi, and that Asoka raised columns in all the places where he stopped." Now it is a curious fact that Kathiâvûd possesses a number of old pillars, several of which, like those near Jasdan, at LÅth 1,20 and near D vår kå, are inscribed. But not one of them belongs to A s oka: they were all erected by the Western Kshatra pa kings or their subjects. Hiwen Thsang no doubt drew his information regarding them from the Buddhist priests at Valabhî. His erroneous statements prove that his informants were not paleographists and antiquarians, but as ignorant of such matters as the Pandits of our days. But, supposing the case that an intending forger had mastered an ancient alphabet, he would still be very far from being able to produce a grant written in it. For the grant has to be incised by a coppersmith or Kanser. Kansârs, though sometimes clever enough in imitating a given document, are utterly helpless if left to themselves. A Kangår would be able to copy an old copper plate with perfect exactness, and probably succeed in making a tolerable copy of a grant written on paper. The forger would, therefore, not only have to give him the grant in Devanagari characters and an ancient alphabet, but he would have to write out the document itself in the old characters, and then to have it transferred to copper. Patient and industrious as the Pandits are, 80 much trouble would not suit their taste, and their deficiency in historical sense and knowledge would not allow them to undertake it. Under these circumstances, and with the actual facts regarding forged grants before our eyes, it is not too much to say that a forged grant may be assigned to that period the characters of which it shows. Now our grant shows Gurjara letters, and therefore most probably belongs to the period when Gurjara characters were used in Gujarat. The latest date which a genuine grant written in Gurjara character shows, is Saka Samvat 749, or 827 A.D., which occurs on the Kåvi plates. It may
18 Burnell, South Indian Pal., p. 119. 27 See Burnell, loc. cit., plate XI.
Ind. Ant., vol. VII, p. 210.
10 Mémoires, tom. II., p. 163. 20 Now in the Museum of the Bom. Br. Roy. As. Soc. 91 Ina, Ant., vol. V, p. 14.
