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190
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
continue the (above-mentioned) sattra and (to perform his) Bali, Charu Vaisvadeva, Agnihotra and other ceremonies and (has been confirmed) by a libation of water. Wherefore nobody shall cause hindrance,
58. The illustrious Govindaraja, the son of the illustrious Subhatunga, the younger brother of Dhârâvarsha, who conquering the foe in battle, made the rule of his brother firm;
59. He, the fire of whose wrath, brilliant
A GRANT OF DHARANIVARAHA OF VADHVAN. BY DR. G. BÜHLER, C. I. E.
A facsimile of the subjoined grant, which was found a good many years ago by some Kolis near Haddâlâ, a large village on the old road from Dholka to Dhandhûka, but belonging to eastern Kathiâvâd, has been furnished to me by Dr. Burgess, while a paper rubbing reached me through the kindness of Colonel Watson of Rajkot, who, I believe, succeeded in getting hold of the original plates. For the second half of the grant I had also an impression on lead which I acquired six years ago from a Soni or goldsmith at Haḍḍâlâ. Immediately after the plates had been discovered, they were taken to this man by the finders, who, as is usually the case, suspected that they contained particulars regarding buried treasure. The Soni, who held the same belief, was unable to read the document, but secured before returning it, a copy by beating thin strips of lead into the plates. He probably hoped to get it explained by some competent person and to use the information which it contained for his own benefit. Ultimately he sold his copy to me, through the intercession of Rao Bahadur Gopalji 8. Desai, Deputy Educational Inspector of Kathiâvâḍ.
[JULY, 1883.
with broad and lambent flames, Brahman and the other gods, stationed in the sky, observed to be not contented with reducing to ashes the enemy's army that was crowded with elephants and horses (but) anxious to pervade the universe was made by Nirupama his messenger, with respect to this grant.
And this has been written by the minister for peace and war, the illustrious Kalyana. This is my own sign manual (viz., that) of the illustrious Dhruvarajadêva, the son of the illustrious Akalavarshadêva.
The grant is written on two semi-elliptical plates, measuring twelve inches in height. At the bottom they are eleven inches broad and at the height of the first line six inches and threequarters. Above the first line there is a space of one inch which bears no letters. On the first plate it shows the rude conventional representation of the moon and the sun, while it is blank on the second. No holes for rings are to be seen. The shape of the plates seems to have been
The portion left out contains the usual admonitions to future kings, and the comminatory verses from the
chosen in order to make them resemble the stones with semicircular tops which are frequently used for land grants and other inscriptions. No other instance of the kind is known to me.
The preservation of the document is nearly perfect, and the execution very good and careful. A remarkable detail shows very clearly that the inscription was first written in exactly the same characters on a piece of birchbark or cloth, of exactly the same dimensions, and that the kansár afterwards copied it stroke for stroke. For in line 20 of the first plate a large blank space has been left between the fifteenth and sixteenth aksharas (dri and gva), because the corresponding akshara in the next following line 21, (rtti) reaches so high that it occupies a portion of the space in the upper line. It is evident that the kansar could only leave a blank space in the upper line, if he had before him an original from which he slavishly copied. The indication furnished by this fact fully agrees with what I pointed out in my article on the forged sasana of Dharasena II of Valabh1, and shows that the kansârs did nothing but copy in a purely mechanical manner what they found in the originals before them.
The alphabet of our grant is the KâyasthaNagari which we find in the Râthor inscriptions of Dantidurga and of Dhruva III of Broach as well as on the Dhiniki plates of J&ika. Only a few letters show differences. Thus the lower part of the letter ya in compound aksharas is frequently made angular and its top usually left open. Again the letter pha has not the old form, but the latter one
Mahabharata.
1 Ind. Ant. vol. X, p. 277.
