Indian Antiquary Vol 32

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 55

FEBRUARY, 1903.) NOTES ON INDIAN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.
NOTES ON INDIAN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.
BY J. F. FLEET, I.C.S. (RETD.), Ph.D., C.L.E. The places mentioned in the spurious plates, belonging to the Library of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, which purport to rogister a grant made
by Dharasena II. of Valabhi in A.D. 478. THIS record is No. 32 in the List of Spurious Records given by me in Vol. XXX. above. 1 1). 214 ff. It has been edited, as a spurious record, by Dr. Bühler in Vol. X, above, p. 277 ff., with a lithograph. I have not been able to trace any information as to the place where the original plates were obtained.
The record parports to have been issued, -sri-Valabhi(bhf)tah, " from the famous Valabhi;" that is, from Wall in the Gohilwad diyision of Kathiâwâr. And it claims that, on
specified day in the month Vaisakha, Saka-Samvat 400 (expired), falling in April, A. D. 478, Dharsséna II. (of the family of the Maitrakas of Valabhi) granted to a Brâhniaŋ, for the purposes of the bali, charn, vai vadova, agnihotra, and panchama håyajia sacrifices, a village (grima) nanel Nardiaraka or Nandisaraka, lying (antah patin) in a territorial division which is mentioned as the KantAragrama sodabatam vishaya.
The alleged grantee was the Bhatta Göminda (for Govinda), son of the Bhatta Isara (for Isvara). His alleged father is described as having come (rinirgala) from Dasapura, and as being a member of the community of Chaturvédins of that place, and as belonging to the Kausika gótra, and as being a student of the Chbandóga (school of the Såmavêda). And the Dabapura thus mentioned is the inodern Mandasor, more properly Dasor, the chief town of the Mandasor district of Scindia's Dominions in the Western Malwa division of Central India.
It cannot be doubted that, in the name of the Kantiragrama bodabatan vishaya, either the word sodabatan is a mistake for shodaśa-sata, a compound of shidasan, 'sixteen,' and satu,
hundred,' or else it is a hybrid word, of which the first component is some unusual or corrupt substitute for the sí! which is the proper Prakpit form in Gujarati, answering to the Marathi sá!d, of the Sanskrit shädasan. The intended meaning of the word, however, is not so obvious. The word hal previously come to notice, in a similar connection, in the spurious Umetal platos, which also parport to have been issued in A. D. 478.3 In editing that record, Dr. Bühler did not translate this word. In editing the present record, however, he took it to mean 'sixteen hundred ;' see Vol. X. above, p. 277 6, “the Sixteen-hundred of Kantâragrâma." And, on & recent occasion, when I was not specially concerned with, and had not fally considered, the geographical details of these two records, I adopted that, the more customary meaning of shadasa-lata, in my entry of them in Vol. XXX. above, p. 216, No. 23, and p. 217, No. 32. But, in his identification of the places mentioned in the Umêta record, Dr. Bübler adopted for enda salan the meaning of one hundred wad sixteen;? See Vol. XVII. above, p. 184, "the 116 villages of the bhakti of Kainaniyx," also p. 193, "the Kamaniya bhukti, which included 116 villages." Now, shuidasa-sala may certainly mean either one hundred and sixteen' or 'sixteen hundred.' Bat, according to the customary method of expressing numbers in the epigraphic records, it would mean sixteen hundred,' and one hundred and sixteen' would be denoted by shôdas-ddhilu-sata, or by shodas-oltara-sata, which actually occurs in karnmantapura-prativaddha-shodasóttaragramasat-antahpáti, "(the village of Parahaņaka) lying in the hundred and sixteen villages attached to the town of Karmantapura," in the Bagumrå plates of A. D. 867, and which was no doubt the basis of the corrupt expression sódasõtta madhyá, for
1 The construction of the passages specifying the alleged grantee and his fathor, is similar to that used in the purions Uméta platos, which has been quoted in Vol. XXXI. above, p. 337.
* See Vol. XV. above, p. 19), and Gupta Inscr. p. 79, note 1. 3 YOL VII. above, p. 64, plate ii., line l. . • Vol. XII. above, P. 185, plate ii.b, line 8 f.