16, The Mallayastika Grant of Nandana. 
By ParamesvarR Dayal, Gaya, 
- [In January 1909 one Pandit Nagesvar Misir of Belsar in the 
Gaya district informed me that Babu Jankt Ballabh Narayan 
plate to me, and desired me to decipher it. 
The Babu told me that in Aghan 1315 F.S., corresponding 
to December 1907, the plate was found by the wife of one 
Dhania Dusadh in the fields of Bhendia Bigha, ahamlet of mauza 
Amauna. Itcame to view after the surface soil had been washed 
away alittle by rain. The site of the find is said to be an elevated 
land which is padti ‘‘ uncultivated ”’ and of the class called rerha, 
a kind of saline unproductive soil, on which even grass does not 
grow, and which becomes soft and loose in the rainy season. 
ere are, however, no indications of ruins at this particular spot, 
though to the north-west of it, at a distance of about a quarter 
of a mile, is a tilha ‘‘ mound ’’ considered to be the site of an 
old mud fort. 
The village of Amauna is about 2 miles east by north of 
and market-place Datidnagar, which is 
I made some impressions of the plate on thin paper, an 
sent some copies of it to Dr. Bloch, the Superintendent of the 
Archeological Survey, Bengal, and at his instance a loan of the 
plate has since been secured by the Magistrate of Gaya from the 
sare aap forwarded to Dr. Bloch 
carin) by a subordinate chieftain (Kumaramatya- Maharaja) 
named Nandana on the 20th day of the month of Margga in the 
(Gupta) year 232. The last line contains the date and two 
uli 
(1) Svamukh-ajia—lit., order out of own mouth, meaning 
most probably ‘‘ by the oral order of the king ”?. of, Svahastoyam- 
