1836.] Facsimiles of various Ancient Inscriptions. 727 



Received only within the last week, I have been so hurried in tran- 

 scribing, translating, and lithographing, that I fear full justice has not 

 been done. The order of the plates having been lost by taking 

 them from their binding ring, I had to guess it from the connection 

 of the reading — and on revising the first translation, with the aid of 

 a second learned pandit (Kamala Kant), 1 found I had inverted the 

 order of the two sides of the second plate in the lithograph, which I 

 was unable to correct, before printing it off. I have also omitted the 

 first syllable slhd of sthdne where this word is repeated in the first page 

 of the lithograph. The rest is, I believe, pretty correct. 



The character in which the Seoni plates are written, when depriv- 

 ed of the open parallelogram at the head of each letter, is so closely 

 allied to No. 2 of the Allahabad lath, that there could have been but 

 little difficulty in deciphering it, even without the aid of Sri Varma 

 ' Sum's alphabet, which Mr. Wilson seems from his words to have 

 applied with considerable distrust at that period*. There are indeed 

 notable deviations from the Chattisgarh typef in several letters, as well 

 as invariably in the application of the vowels. I had inserted Varma 

 Suri's alphabet in Plate XXXIII. with a few variations marked. I 

 have now further noted some of the chief peculiarities at the foot of 

 the last plate. 



Concerning the purport of the inscription little need be said. It is 

 an ordinary grant by one Raja Pravara Sena, of a piece of ground in 

 a conquered district to his officiating priest, in perpetuity : — but neither 

 the country nor the boundary villages mentioned, nor any of the said 

 Raja's family can be recognized ! The dynasties of Cut tack, the near- 

 est resembling Vdkdtaka in sound, exhibit no such names as Pravara 

 Sena, Rudra Sena, Prithivi Sena, Rujdra Sena ; and again Pravara 

 Sena, who successively reigned over this unknown province. That 

 they were of an inferior grade is shewn by their simple title of Maha- 

 raja, while Deva Gupta, whose daughter was married to one of the 

 line, and was mother to Rudra Sena II. is styled the paramount 

 sovereign (Maharaja AdhirdjaJ. This is the second instance within 

 a year of our finding the record of a matrimonial alliance with a 

 Gupta family, which we can suppose to be no other than the one now 

 so well known to us through coins and pillars. The present name 

 Deva Gupta, however, is an addition to our still growing catalogue. 



* " After two months the pandit was again called on without previous notice 

 or preparation to read his copy of the original, whilst his reading was checked by- 

 careful reference to the Devanagari transcript." As. Res. XV. 507. 



t M. Jacquet has sent me from Paris the facsimile of a plate in the Tod 

 collection, which corresponds more closely with the Chattisgarh plates. 

 5 b 2 



