35* The Kotwalipara Spurious Grant of Samacara Deva. 



By Rakhal Das Banerji, with a Prefatory JVote by Mr. 

 H. E. Stapleton, B.A., Inspector of Schools, Dacca. 



NOTE. 



The principal feature of the bit country lying in the S. W. 

 of Faridpur district is the finely preserved fortification of 

 Kotwalipara, the mud walls of which are each about 2 miles 

 long and 20 to 30 feet high. Early in 1908, in the course of a 

 tour of inspection in Bakarganj and Southern Faridpur, I had 

 the opportunity of visiting the locality in company with an 

 Assistant Settlement Officer, Babu Kalipada Maitra, and as. 

 the result of my request that he should look out for coins, and 

 copper plates similar to the one described in the Journ. Asiatic 

 Soc. Bengal for 1896, pp, 6—15, by Babu Nagendranath 

 Basu, that is alleged to have come from the village of Pifi- 

 jurl close to and outside the south-west corner of the for- 

 tification, Kalipada Babu forwarded to me later, in 1908, 

 the rubbings of two Gupta coins, and the copper-plate that 

 forms the subject of Babu Rakhaldas Banerji's note. A cast 

 of one Gupta coin now in my possession, belonging to Skanda 

 Gupta, was exhibited with the copper-plate at the Society's 

 Conversazione last January, and the other coin is dealt with in 

 a recent paper on Eastern Bengal and Assam history (Journ. 

 Asiatic Soc. Bengal, 1909, Contributions I, p. 142). The 

 copper-plate was at first entrusted to Mahamahopadhyaya 

 Haraprasad Sastri who, with the help of Pandit Nilmani 

 Chakravarti, roughly deciphered it and read the date as being 

 44 of the Sri Harsha era (== 651 A.D.). He added, however, 

 that, in the opinion of the late Dr. Bloch, the plate was a 

 kuta sasatia, or forgery. Babu Rakhaldas Banerji subsequently 

 undertook to make a more thorough study of the plate, with 

 the result that Dr. Bloch's opinion seems to be confirmed. 



The plate is said to have been recently discovered about 

 9 inches under the surface of the ground by a cultivator while 

 digging his holding at Ghagrahati, a mauza close to Pinjuii on 

 the Ghagar River which runs from north to south along the 

 western par of the fortification. The names of the mauzas in 

 the immediate vicinity bear no relation to the names given at 

 the end of the fortification, but 2£ miles north, near the north- 

 west corner of the fort, occur four mauzas, Ferdhara (to the south 

 of the village and thana Ghagarhat), Koakha (to the north- 

 east of the same village), Parkundhdt (within the fort at the 



