1869.] "*" Text and Translation of Balandshahar Inscription. 21 



Text and Translation of Balandshahar Inscription. By 



Prata'pachandra Ghosha, B. A. 



[Received 13th. March, 1869.] 



The copper-plate inscription, a translation of which is hereto ap- 

 pended, was presented to the Society in February, 1867 by Mr. 

 Webster, Collector of Balandshahar. He says, it was found in a 

 ruined gurhee situated in mouzah Manpur, pergunna Agoutha. The 

 inscription records the grant of a village named Gandavd made by 

 one Ananga to a brahman of the Vdtsa Gotra. The grant was made 

 in the vernal equinox of Samvat 1233. The engravers were 

 Jc&yasthas* 



The plate is in tolerable preservation, and measures 1 foot 9 inches 

 by 1 foot 1 inch. It would have been a useful link in the chain of 

 Indian history of the time of the first Mahomedan invasion, if some 

 coins or other inscriptions were forthcoming as corroborations of the 

 dates and the names of kings immortalized in this plate. But as it 

 is, the plate is a solitary landmark in the history of Kalinga, a name 

 that conveys to the mind of the reader a vague notion of the sea-coast 

 on the south of Bengal. The most inexplicable fact connected with 

 this plate is, that it was found so high up near Balandshahar. 



Kalinga has no representative in the coin cabinet, unless under 

 some other name ; and the names of the kings Govinda, Chandraka, 

 Bhojadeva, Vikramaditya and Ananga,though occurring in many dynas- 

 ties, are never coupled with the Kalinga country or the Bodra family, a 

 family quite unknown in the history of the Deccan. Kalinga extend- 

 ed over a large tract of country from Orissa to the Nilgiris. It was 

 never owned by a single sovereign. Different parts of it were at the 

 same time owned by several potentates, and the Rodra dynasty was 

 one of those petty chiefs. The kings of Orissa, for a long time in 

 the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, called them- 

 selves sovereigns of Kalinga and Karnata {Kalinga nava koti Karnate- 

 svara), though it is known, they had little to do with Karnata, which 

 had its own kings. Such assumptions of sovereignty over dominions 

 which kings do not possess, are not rare. Bodras probably owning a 

 small part of Kalinga, assumed the whole. 



This race of kings is quite unknown, unless the reading of the 

 name is found fault with ; and I admit, it may be read otherwise. 



