298 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [June, 1911. 
octavo size plate is almost illegible. The reproduction both 
in the Journal Asiatique and in the Annales of the Musée 
understand why M. Lévi refers this inscription definitely to the 
6th century A.D.' On the other hand, I beg to differ from his 
conclusion. The inscription certainly belongs to the 5th cen- 
tury A.D. and cannot be referred to any later date. In this 
connection, I may be allowed to state that M. Lévi’s theory 
about an era of the Licchavis, the initial year of which falls in 
110 A.D., does not in any way interfere with my statements 
about the peculiarities of the epigraphic alphabet of the 
6th century A.D.* Thus if the date of Bendall’s Golmad- 
years only. I believe M. Lévi is quite right in reading the 
numeral for 500 and referring the date to the era of the Liccha- 
vis. Thus we find that in the 6th and the 7th century the Ha, 
La and Sa have the usual form of the characters: cf. the steles 
of Harigaion dated Harsa samvat 30 and 32, i.e. 636 and 
638 A.D. The older inscriptions dated in the Harsa era have 
been already mentioned by me in a previous paper quoted 
above and they fully bear out the conclusions arrived at. 
(If) Tse Marnop or Grantine Lanp. 
We find a novel method of granting land to a Brahmana 
in these four copperplate grants. The usual method, which is 
to be found in the majority of the copperplate grants in 
Northern India, is that a King grants the land to a Brahmana 
and has the document inscribed on a plate or a number of 
plates of copper in order to ensure its permanency. 
characteristics of a copperplate grant. They are:— 
1) The first portion may be either in prose or verse and 
generally gives the genealogy of the King or an eulogium on 
him. In shorter grants this portion is written in prose and 
pt. Ind., vol. ix, pp. 285-286. 
* Annales du Musee Guimet, tome xix, Le Népal, vol. iii, pp. 74-75. 
+ Ibid., pp. 50-51, a 
