292 Account of Tamba Patra Plates found at Baroda. [April,, 



Art. II. — Account of Tamba Patra Plates dug up at Baroda in 

 Goojrat ; with Facsimile and Translation. 



(Laid before the Meeting of the Asiatic Society of 5th June, 1839.) 



The Tamba Patras now submitted to the inspection of the members 

 of this Society were placed in my hands by Mr. W. P. Grant, who ob- 

 tained them from Beni Ram, of Baroda, and whose account of the 

 method of their discovery as derived from that person, was, that they 

 were dug up in excavating the foundations of a house in that city. 



The grant is peculiar in many respects. It is in a character not 

 exactly corresponding with any previously observed, but sufficiently 

 similar to that of the grants decyphered by Mr. Wathen to be easily 

 made out by persons accustomed to the work, after a little study and 

 comparison. The pandits and antiquaries of Baroda, indeed, were 

 baffled in their attempts to make out the character, and the plates were 

 put into my hands as undecypherable ; but Kamlakanta, the pandit 

 who assisted our late Secretary in his discoveries, undertook the task of 

 reading them with confidence, and accomplished the complete trans- 

 cription into Devanagri in about a fortnight. The plates are sub- 

 mitted to inspection with a transcript, fac-simile, and close translation, 

 the latter made by Saroda Parshad Chakravarti. 



They are found to be the record of a deed of grant made by Karka' 

 Raja of Ldteshwara to Bha'nu Brahmin, son of Sa'maditya, in the 

 year of Saka 734, corresponding with 812 a.d., that is, just one thousand 

 and twenty- seven years ago. Their state of preservation is wonderful 

 for such a period, but that may be owing partly to the purity of the cop- 

 per, and partly to the care with which the edges have been beaten up 

 so as to take all the friction, and prevent the faces of the plates from 

 rubbing against one another. Their present appearance is owing to an 

 acid having been used to clean them. 



Although uniformly clean and bright, the marks of corrosion will be 

 observed in several places, which are the effect of antiquity ; but for- 

 tunately the letters are so deeply engraved that scarcely any are com- 

 pletely effaced. 



The historical facts deducible from this Tamba Patra are the 

 following : — 



First, That towards the end of the 8th and beginning of the 9th 

 century of our era, that is during the reign of Charlemagne of France, 

 Hindoostan and the Dukhun were divided into four kingdoms : — The 

 Gajara Raj westward — the Malwa Raj centrical — to the east the 

 Gourha Raj, (including Bengal and Behar) — and the Ldteshwara Raj 



