________________
JUNE, 1883.]
DHINIKI GRANT OF JAIKADEVA.
THE DHINIKI GRANT OF KING JAIKADEVA, TOGETHER WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE VIKRAMA, VALABHI AND GUPTA ERAS.
BY DR. G. BÜHLER, C.I.E.
I. THE GRANT OF JAIKADEVA. THE subjoined grant of Jâikade v a, lord of THE Saurashtra, was dug up during the famine relief operations of 1879-80 in the Undke talão, a tank situated a mile to the north-east of the present village of Dhiniki,' but close to the ruins of old Dhiniki, in the Okhâmandal district of the Kathiâvâd peninsula. It was subsequently, in 1881, brought to the notice of my friend Colonel Watson, President of the Rajasthanik Court, by Ajam Vajeshankar G. Ozhâ of Bhaunagar, who furnished to the former a paper impression of the plates. About the same time another rubbing was sent to me by the Deputy Educational Inspector of Kathiavid, Rão Bahadur Gopâlji S. Desai. On my communicating with Colonel Watson regarding the document, I received from him successively another rubbing, a photograph, and finally the original plates themselves, as well as numer. ous important notes on the historical and geographical questions connected with the grant. Colonel Watson also generously relinquished his intention of editing the grant and made over to me, when he learnt I was anxious to publish the grant, a valuable manuscript article which he had already written.
The grant is written on the inner sides of two plates, measuring 9 inches by 5, the thinnest and smallest I have ever seen used for a śâsana by a ruler of Western India. A small hole through the bottom of the first and the top of the second, shows that they were originally held together by a ring. It is doubtful if the ring bore a seal, because the cognizance of the king, a fish, is engraved at the bottom of Plate II. The preservation of the plates is very good, in spite of the muddy bed in, which they must have lain for a long time. Only very few letters in line 2 of Plate I and in the first five lines of Plate II, have been partly de stroyed by verdigris. Nevertheless the grant is difficult to read, and some of the names contained in it remain either very doubtful or
The village is called Dhingi in the old maps, Dhaniki on the Trig. Surv. map, and bears also the names Dhinki and Dhanika. It lies south-east of Dvårka and close to the sea.
Compare in these respects the Lupavada plates of
151
absolutely undecipherable. One cause of this fact is the extreme slovenliness of the execution. A great many letters have been formed inaccurately and carelessly, and some have not even been finished. In a few cases the punch has also completely gone through the thin sheet of copper. It is perfectly clear that the kansår who transferred the grant to the plates, must have been unskilled and unaccustomed to delicate work. Another circumstance which contributes to the difficulty of the document is that the clerk or Kârkûn who wrote the MS. copy must have been careless or in a hurry. This is shown by the displacement of the mátras, or e strokes, which, as often happens in modern official documents, repeatedly stand over the wrong syllables, e. g. in vude for véda (I. 6), likhyenta for likhyante (I. 10), and by the omission of many superscribed rephas and anusváras. The alphabet used is the literary alphabet of Western and, probably also, of Central India, which first occurs in the royal sign manual of the Gurjara grants of the 5th century A.D. A few years ago most epigraphists would have unhesitatingly condemned the Dhiniki śasana, on account of the modern appearance of its characters, as a forgery of the 11th or 12th century. Now that Professor Max Müller's great discovery of the old palm leaves from Japan, the Valabhi plates of Śiladitya II, dated Sam. 352, and the excellent facsimile of Dantidurga-Khadgavaloka's Sâmangadh plates, dated 675 are before the public, it is no longer possible to fall into such an error. On the contrary, it must be conceded that an alphabet closely resembling the modern Dêvanâgarî was in general use certainly during the 7th and 8th centuries, and probably at a much earlier date. Though it would seem that this alphabet was regularly used for literary purposes only, it cannot be denied that it sometimes was employed for sâsanas also. In order to test a new grant which shows not the archaic "cave characters," but a more modern looking
Siladitya V. Ind. Ant. vol. VI, p. 17, seqq. and my Rathor grant, No. IV, to be published shortly in this Journal.
Ind. Ant. vol. XI, p. 305 f. • Ind. Ant. vol. XI, pp. 110-112.
