1900.] M. M. Cliakravarti — Inscription of Kapilendra Beva. 
173 
An Inscription of the time of Kapilendra Beva of Orissa, from Gopinatha- 
pura, District Cuttach. ( With an Appendix on the last Hindu 
Kings of Orissa.)— By Babu Mon Mohan Chakravarti, M.A., B.L., 
M.R.A.S. 
[Read April, 1899.] 
This inscription comes from the village Gropinathapura in District 
Cuttack, Orissa. The village is 13 miles N. E. of the town Kataka, and 
stands on the Birupa brancli of the river Mahanadi. Its position 
would be about 20° 31' Lat. and 86° 4' long. The inscription is on a 
stone slab attached to the eastern gate of a middle sized temple of 
Jagannatha. It commemorates the erection of tljat temple and of the 
companion temple of.Gundica, where the cars used to be driven to at the 
time of the great Ratha festival. Both the temples now lie dilapidated, 
and the car-festival is no longer held. 
The stone slab containing the inscription is about 3'3" x 2'6" x 6''. 
I edit the inscription from two inked estampages not very well done. 
The inscription is peculiar at least in one respect. The language is 
Sanskrit, but the characters are Oriya. As yet this appears to be the 
earliest known inscription of sucli a kind. 
To begin with, the characters generally resemble the modern Oriya 
letters. Small differences are observable in ca, ja, da, ta, dha, bha, 
ra, la, ha, and ya, the differences being mainly in the terminal loop. 
The letter ta is still in Kutila type. The vowel marks do not differ. 
The conjunct consonants often differ, in sevei*al instances approaching 
the modern Bengali conjuncts, such as those of g (in gka, gga), those 
of y (in sya, dyaj, those of v (in dhva). The letters are fairly legible, 
except in the middle and in some of the lower lines. They vaiy in size, 
those in the first line being 1'' x in the last line and else- 
where varying from x to xf". The lines do not run straight, 
but in a slipshodly curved way. 
The orthography presents no great peculiarity. The halanta is 
generally conjuncted with the initial consonant of the next word {cf. 
Is. 6, 9 and 11) ; the guttural g is sometimes represented by anusvara 
J. I. 23 
