EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
I.—JABALPUR COPPER-PLATE INSCRIPTION OF YASAHKARNADEVA.
[A. D. 1122.]
By Professor F. Kielhorn, Ph.D., C.I.E., Gottingen.
This inscription, of which I am unable to say where 1 or by whom it was discovered, was engraved on two plates. Both plates were deposited in the Nagpur Museum, where a Devanagari transcript of the whole inscription was made which seems to exist still and which will be referred to below. Subsequently the second of the two plates was either lost or stolen. But the first plate is still in the Museum ; and, since the inscription even in its fragmentary state is. of some importance, being the only one of the Chedi king Yasahkarnadeva hitherto discovered, I edit it now from five rubbings and impressions which during the last two or three years have been kindly supplied to me by Dr. Burgess, Mr. Fleet, and Colonel J. A. Temple. 2
The plate is inscribed on one side only, and measures about 1' Q" broad by 1' high. At the bottom it has a round hole, about f " in diameter, for a ring which has probably disappeared together with the missing plate. The writing has suffered a good deal from corrosion, and there are in consequence several aksharas which cannot be read with absolute certainty. But, fortunately, everything of historical importance is clear and distinct, and there is no doubt about the purport of any part of the inscription. The size of the letters is between f " and The characters are Nagari, and the language is Sanskrit. Excepting the introductory om om namo Vrahmane and a few words at the end, the inscription is in verse. The total number of verses is 24, of which 16 occur also in the Kumbhi copper-plate inscription of Gosaladevi. 3 As regards orthography, the letter b
1 I call the plate tlie Jabalpur plate, because it is so called by Sir A. Cunningham. The district of ' Javalipattaua or Jauli-patau' was apparently mentioned in the lost portion of the inscription. See the references in note 2, below.
2 See Grant's Gazetteer of the Central Provinces, 2nd edition, Introduction, pp. li and Hi ; and Sir A. Cunningham's Archceulogical Survey of India, vol. IX, pp. 87 and 88. Several of the statements which have been made regarding this inscription, on the basis of the Nagpur Museum transcript, are very incorrect. Thus, according to one account, the inscription is one of Karnadeva, according to another it belongs to Gayakarna, and the transcript is said to read S'ri-maheSa- Karna ; but there can be no doubt that the inscription belongs to Yasahkarna and that, what the copyist had before him in the now lost plate, was S'rimad-YaSahkarna. Karnadeva is said to have built a fort named Kama Mem from which flowed the river Karnavati; in reality Karna built a temple at Banaras, which the poet describes as Kama's Mem, and he founded the town oJ Karnavati. The same Karna is said to have conquered Bhimesvara, king of Andhra, who is identified with Bhima II, one "I the eastern Chalukyas. What the inscription really says is, that Yasahkarna defeated the king of Andhra, and that he subsequently presented the holy Bhimesvara (or Siva) with many ornaments. [See page 7, note 48. — K. H.]
3 Edited and translated in the Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. VIII, pp. 483—495; and re-edited by Dr. F. E. Hall, ib., vol. XXXI, pp. llo" — 123. It will be seen that the present inscription, in verses 3, 5, 8, 12, 14, and 20, furnishes decidedly better readings than those given by Dr. Hall, and that in verse 21 it supplies certain words which have been either omitted or given quite wrongly in the published versions of the Kumbhi inscription.
