1858.] Of two Edicts bestowing Land. 229 



officers of gynecia, envoys, and persons who are proprietors of ele- 

 phants, of horses, of towns, of mines,* and of herds of kine.f 



Be it known to you : whereas : after ablution in the Ganges, at 

 the landing of the divine and blessed Trilochana, at Varanasi ;J on 

 Monday, the third day of the light semi-lunation, in the month of 

 Mdgha, the sua having entered its northern path,§ in the year 

 eleven hundred and fifty-four ; or, expressed in numerals, on Mon- 

 day, the 3rd day of the bright fortnight|| in Mdgha, in 1154 of the 

 Samvat era, at Varanasi : the village designated above ; with its 

 water and soil, with its iron-mines and salt-pits, with and includ- 



* A'kara-sthdna ; literally, ' the site of a mine.' 



f Some of these terms have, as yet, no place in our dictionaries ; and several 

 of them are, most probably, peculiar to the Sanskrit of the age in which the 

 dynasty flourished to which the present patent appertains. For most of them, or 

 of their synonymes, see the As. Res., Vol. XV., pp. 21 and 45 ; Transactions of 

 the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. I., pp. 174 and 175 ; and this Journal, for 1839, 

 p. 486. A number of them, ill-explained, occur in the same Journal, for 1841, 

 p. 103. 



% The quay of Trilochana, ' the Three-eyed,' or S'iva, still maintain its repu- 

 tation for sanctity, at Varanasi, or Benares. 



§ ^tT^CRH! ; corrected from x3TTTJ«f5jcr of the copper plate ; most of the 

 minor errors of which I have rectified without directing attention to them. Among 

 these is the constant substitution of the dental sibilant for the palatal. One or 

 two omissions of uniting concurrent vowels, disallowed by a severe conformity to 

 the requirements of grammar, have been retained for sake of clearness. 



|| Instead of J^f^, we often, and perhaps oftener, find ^jf^T ; as in the text. 

 The U'shma-viveha has both forms. Though no other sober etymology of the 

 word can readily be suggested, yet Dr. Mill's derivation of it, by abbreviation from 

 gj^jq-^jf^-ij should, therefore, be regarded with distrust. See Journal of the 

 As. Soc. of Bengal, for 1835, p. 397. The Pandits look upon it as a word adopt- 

 ed into the Sanskrit from the vernacular languages. The S'abda-Jcalpa-druma, 

 which has ^jjf^, is silent concerning its origin, and would restrict its use to * the 

 western country :' xrfigij^'^; 3ff%^J p« 6195. The corresponding term, "3"fk" 

 is omitted by the S' abda-kalpa-druma ; and for a reason which not unfrequently 

 has weight with this Encyclopaedia. It is not in the Dictionary of Prof. Wilson. 



Modern grammarians, fancifully enough, refer ^f^ to ^ or ^g- and ^]«f or 

 <£^TfiT, ^ importing the fortnight in which one ' appropriately presents' offerings 

 to the gods. In like manner they would derive erf^ from ^j^^jfrr, after aphae- 

 resis, as denoting the half-month duringjvvhich a Hindu 'devotes oblations' to his 

 ancestral manes. 



