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SEPTEMBER, 1892.)
MUNGIR GRANT OF DEVAPALADEVA.
253
THE MUNGIR COPPER-PLATE GRANT OF DEV APALADEVA.
BY PROFESSOR F. KIELHORN, C.I.E.; GÖTTINGEN. THE plate containing this inscription - so far as I know, the first Sanskrit inscription that
I was ever brought to the notice of European scholars – was found about 1780 by Colonel Watson' at Mungir, the chief town of the Mungir District of the Bengal Province, on the south bank of the Ganges. The inscription was translated by Charles Wilkins in 1781, and his translation was published, with a few notes by Sir W. Jones and a lithographed facsimiles (but without a transcript) of the original text, in 1788, in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. I. pp. 123-130 and 142. The plate having been lost, I now venture to edit the inscription from the published lithograph, which, with all its defects, is by no means so valueless as may appear to be the case, at first sight.
The plate was a single one. Judging from the lithograph, it was surmounted by an ornament, fixed on the upper part, and advanced some distance on the plate so as to occasion a break in the upper lines. As in the case e.g. of the Dinajpur plate of Mahipaladêva, this ornament in all probability contained a seal, across which were engraved the words ári-Dévapaladévasya which in the lithograph are put at the top. The plate itself contained 52 lines of writing, 36 of which were on the front and 16 on the back of the plate. The writing was well preserved throughout. The characters clearly were of the same type as those of the Badal pillar inscription and of the Dinajpur plate. Thus, to mention a characteristic feature of this alphabet, there can be no doubt that the letter t, preceding another consonant, was ordinarily denoted by a short line, sideways attached to the right side of the akshara of which forms part. By the lithographer this short line has been altogether overlooked, and accordingly tho letter ris omitted in the lithograph about twenty-five times. Similarly, the peculiar way in which medial d, e, ai, 6 and au were written in the original plate, has often caused the engraver of the lithograph to omit the signs for the medial á and é, and to put a, é and o in the place of ó, ai and au. The sign of the avagraha was exceptionally employed in the original in mürttá s thavá, in line 16, and 5 kinchitpragráhyo, in line 40. The language is Sanskrit. Excepting the introductory ôm svasli, the inscription is in verse down to the commencement of line 24. Lines 24-46, containing the formal part of the grant, are in prose; they are followed, in lines 46-50, by four of the customary benedictive and imprecatory verses; and the inscription closes with another veree, in lines 50-52, which gives the name of the dittaka of this grant. The inscription was written and engraved with great care, and in regard to orthography I need only state here that 6 throughout is denoted by the sign for v, and that instead of anusvára the guttural nasal has been employed in the word (va*]nsa, in line 50.
In writing out my text, I have not considered it necessary to record all the very numerous minor errors and omissions of the lithograph. The only passages about which I am at all doubtful, and in which the rediscovery of the plate may prove me to have gone wrong, are the words suvinayinám, in line 5, rájakuliya-samasta., in line 40, and kara-hirany, in line 45. For the rest, my text will, I trast, speak for itself.
The inscription is one of the devout worshipper of Sugata, or Buddha, the Paraméśvara, Faramabhattáraka and Maharajadhiraja, the illustrious Devapaladove, who meditated on the feet of the devout worshipper of Sagata, the Paramésvara, Paramabhaļļdraka and Mahárdjádhi.
1 See Asiatic Researches, Vol. I. p. 132.
. The statement of the late Dr. Røjendrall Mitra (Indo-Aryans, Vol. II. p. 219), that the translation was published without any facsimile, is of course incorrect.
In the lithograph it is often quite impossible to distinguish between P, m, and y, or even 8. D is engraved instead of n, orm, or y, or v; d4 instead of ; nd instead of nt, or ndh, ornn; bh instead of s; y instead of chy, or dy, or sy: v instead of ch, or #, Or T, QE rth. The signs of the original for ksh and d are aruwn quite wrongly. And the signs of an usvara and visarga, and those of the subscript u, ri, and r, are often omitted. But it is one great advantage that the lithograph was prepared by an artist who did not understand the language of the original,
