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APRIL, 1892.]
THE AMGACHHI GRANT OF VIGRAHAPALADEVA III.
THE AMGACHHI COPPER-PLATE GRANT OF VIGRAH APALADEVA III.
BY PROFESSOR F. KIELHORN, C.I.E.; GOTTINGEN.
THE HE plate which contains this inscription was found, in 1806, at Amgâchhi in the Dinajpur District of the Bengal Province, by a peasant, digging earth for the repair of a road near his cottage; and it was forwarded to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, in whose Library it is still deposited. An account of the inscription was given by H. T. Colebrooke, in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. IX. pp. 434-38, and republished in his Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. II. pp. 279-82. And a tentative reading of the text was first published by Dr. Hoernle, in the Centenary Review of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Part ii. pp. 210-13, and reprinted, after revision, ante, Vol. XIV. pp. 166-68. For my own account of this inscription I have used an excellent ink-impression, made and supplied to me by Mr. Fleet.
The plate is a single one, measuring about 12" broad by 141" high, and surmounted by a highly wrought ornament of brass, fixed on the upper part, and advanced some distance on the plate so as to occasion a considerable break in the upper lines. It contains 49 lines of writing, 33 of which are on the front, and 16 on the back of the plate. The writing has suffered much from corrosion, especially on the proper right side of the front and on the corresponding part of the back, where many aksharas are more or less illegible. The size of the letters is about "The characters may be described as Nâgarî, of about the 11th century A.D., but as a special feature of the alphabet employed it may be pointed out that r, preceding another consonant, is often written by a short line, sideways attached to the right side of the akshara of which it forms part, not by the ordinary superscript sign, -a peculiarity which the inscription shares with others written in Eastern India. The language is Sanskrit. From about the middle of line 20 to the beginning of line 43 the inscription is in prose; the rest, excepting the introductory ôm svasti, is in verse. As regards orthography, the imperfect state of the plate prevents me from saying more than that b is throughout denoted by the sign for v.
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The inscription is one of the devout worshipper of Sugata, or Buddha, the Paramésvara Paramabha!! áraka and Mahárájádhirája, the illustrious Vigrahapaladeva, who meditated 'on the feet of the Mahárájádhirája, the illustrious Nayapaladeva (lines 23-24); and both in the arrangement of the matter and in its wording it follows closely the Bhagalpur grant of Nàràyanapâladêva, published ante, Vol. XV. pp. 305.7. After the words om svasti, it contains (in lines 1-20) fourteen verses on the genealogy of Vigrahapala, the text of which will be given in full below. In the prose portion which follows (lines 20-42) the king from his camp of victory pitched at a place which was not Mudgagiri, but which is spoken of exactly as Mudgagiri is in the Bhagalpur plate, informs the people and officials concerned that, in order to please the holy Buddha (bhagavantam Vu(bu)ddha-bhattárakam uldisya, line 36), after bathing in the Ganges on the occasion of a lunar eclipse (line 40), he has granted to a Brahman some land in the Kotivarsha vishaya of the Pundravardhana bhukti (line 24); and he directs the people to make over to the donee whatever may be due to him under this grant. This prose part closes (in line 42) with the date, probably the year 132 on the 9th day of Chaitra.' Lines 42-48 contain a number of benedictive and imprecatory verses. Another verse (in lines 48-49) gave the name of the data, appointed by Vigrahapala for this grant. And the inscription (in line 49) closes with a verse according to which the plate was engraved by the artizan Saśidêva, a son of Mahîdharadeva3, who, or whose ancestors, had come from the village of Posali.
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What is of real and, indeed, of very great value in this inscription, plate grant hitherto discovered of the so-called Påla dynasty of Bengal, verses with which it opens. Of these, verses 1-5 are identical with the
the latest copperare the fourteen verses 1, 2, 4, 5
1 See Asiatic Researches, Vol. IX. p. 434.
2 I am unable to make out with certainty from the ink-impression whether the year is 12 or 13. This Mahidhara engraved the Dinajpur plate of Mahipaladeva which will be mentioned below.
