288 
[No. 4, 
R. Hoernle— The Noivgong Copper-plate. 
Gauhati plate at this point. I suggest that the conclusion of the 8th 
verse in that plate should read jacds=iv—anujah instead of ja^as—tanujah, 
though even then the metrical difficulty remains, as the metre would 
require anujah. It will he noticed, that the text of the two initial 
lines of the obverse of the second plate, in which the word tanujah 
occurs, is also in other respects defective or incorrect. It is clear, 
therefore, that the reading tanujah is untrustworthy, whatever its true 
emendation may be. 
One more point requires a word of explanation. The word kill a 
I now take to have its ordinary meaning of ‘ bank ’ or ‘ coast/ 
Accordingly I take daksina-kule in II6 9 to mean ‘ on the southern 
bank ’ of some river. The only river, of course, which can be thus 
referred to is the Brahmaputra, the valley of which mainly constitutes 
Asam. Similarly, in the Gauhati plate, lift 6 , uttara-kule must mean ‘on 
the northern side of the Brahmaputra ’; and I suppose, the word kulam 1 
used there in Ilia 1 and Ilia 9 , in the description of the granted land, 
must refer to the (northern) bank of that river, which, accordingly, 
must have touched the boundary of that land at a point on its East- 
North-Bast. As the land is said to have had the river Digumma on its 
South-West, West, and North-West, it must have lain between the 
Digumma and the Brahmaputra, near the confluence of those two rivers, 
in one of those numerous spots where the Brahmaputra takes a small 
north-southerly turn from its generally east-westerly direction. The 
point might be settled, if it were possible to identify the Digumma 
river; but that name appears to have disappeared. 2 
A curiosity of the Nowgong plate is that it contains numerous 
plagiarised passages from Kalidasa’s well-known Raghuvari^a. These 
plagiarisms were discovered and published by an anonymous writer 
in the Asdm, an Assamese vernacular paper, which has taken a good 
deal of interest in the enquiries Mr. Gait is making in regard to the 
ancient history of the province. They were brought to my notice by 
Mr. Gait. They are the following passages or clauses, taken verbally 
from the Raghuvaxin^a :— 
(1) Nowgong Plate, verse 5 (16 5 ), from Raghuvam^a, sarga 6, 
9 loka 64 : tambula-valli-parinarldha-puga. 
(2) N. PI., verse 7 (I6 9 ), from R. V., sarga 6, 9 loka 21 : prajd- 
ranjana-lab dha-varna. 
(3) N. PI., verse 7 (I6 9 ) from R. V., sarga 5, 9 loka 19 : varn - 
agramdndm guru. 
(4) N. PL, verse 9 (lb 10 ); from R. V., sarga 1, 9 loka 30: pariklu- 
krta-sdgaram. 
2 See ante, Vol. LXVI, p. 122. 
