19* Talcher Plate of Gayadatungadeva. 

 By R. D. Banerji, M.A., Indian Museum, Calcutta 



(With Plates III— IV.) 



This copper-plate was sent to me in March, 1911, by Mr. 

 L. E. B. Cobden Ramsay. I.C.S., Political Agent, Orissa Feu- 

 datory States, in connection with the work of editing the 

 posthumous works of the late Dr. T. Bloch, Superintendent, 

 Archaeological Survey, Eastern Circle. I found that the plate 

 had not been seen by Dr. Bloch. According to the information 

 supplied by Mr. Ramsay, the plate belongs to the Talcher State, 

 and it has been edited by Babu Nagendranath Vasu, Prachya 

 vidyamaharnava. l 



The inscription is incised on a single plate of thick copper 

 measuring 5f " x 4" with a projection on the top to which is 

 attached a seal, elliptical in shape, major axis measuring 2\" 

 and the minor 1-1 3/1 6". The seal seems to be cast in some 

 lighter metal, probably brass. The credit of discovering the 

 first copper-plate inscription of Gayadatungadeva, in very 

 prosaic surroundings, belongs to Prof. Nilmani Chakravartti 

 of the Presidency College, Calcutta, who found it in the 

 library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. This inscription 

 has been edited by Prof. Chakravartti in 1909. 2 The present 

 inscription is much smaller than the Asiatic Society's plate 

 and refers to the reign of the same king. The seal is 

 identical with that of the Asiatic Society's plate, but the 

 letters are no longer legible. On the top of the letters we 

 have the crescent, and below, the bull Nandi and a tree to its 

 left. The inscription on the first side of the plate is almost 

 identical with that on 11. 1-18 of the Asiatic Society's plate* 

 It records the grant of a certain village made to three 

 Brahmanas by a king named Gayadatungadeva, who claimed 

 to have descended from the Tunga (Rastrakuta ? ) family and 

 belonged to the Sandilya gotra. The family is said to have 

 come from Rohitagiri, modern Rohtasgarh in the Shahabad 

 District of Bengal, which is mentioned in an inscription from 

 the same locality, now in the Indian Museum as RohitaSva.* 

 Gayadaturiga's titles are Parama-maheSvara-samadhigata- 



i The Archaeological Survey of Mayurabhahja, Vol. I, pp. 152 ff. t 



with plates. 



» J. & P. A.S.B., Vol. V, p. 347. 



3 Rohtas Inscription of the Tomara Mitrasena— J.A.S.B., Vol, VIII, 



p. 695. 



