319 
1874.] Prannath Pandit —Note on the Chittagong Copperplate . 
to diminish the intervals between the lines as well as the size and depth of 
the letters. The left side of the second face is to a considerable extent 
worn away, and could not without difficulty he decyphered. I have put 
an asterisk over letters which are conjectural and enclosed in brackets 
those which have been apparently omitted by mistake, though they are ab¬ 
solutely necessary to make the sentences intelligible. 
Babu Oomachurn Boy, Treasurer, gives the following account of the 
finding of the plate in a letter to A. L. Clay, Esq., Officiating Collector of 
Chittagong, the Society being indebted to the latter gentleman for his for¬ 
warding the plate with the whole correspondence. 
“ The copper plate was found at the time of re-digging a pond in 
Napirabad, a village on the south-east corner of the Sadr station of 
Chittagong. This pond formerly belonged to the Bliats of that village, 
and it now belongs to a Muhammadan. The plate was also found by a 
M uh ammadan. ’ ’ 
The language is Sanskrit Poetry, with the exception of the first sentence 
and the description of the boundaries of the lands, which are the subject of the 
gift. The latter are given in prose, which will bear no strict grammatical 
analysis. It would seem that the description of the dynasty, the donor, and 
the donee, and the usual formula at the end, were drawn up by the court 
Pandits, who left the details of the boundaries to be filled in by subordinate 
officials. For the sake of convenience, I have numbered the couplets which 
constitute the greater part of the engraving on the plate. The first sloka 
is in adoration of Damodara, a synonym of Krishna, # who had been identi¬ 
fied with Vishnu long before. The particular synonym is chosen for the sake 
of a double entendre , the reigning king, the donor, being of that name. 
The second sloka is in praise of the Moon, and from this we may fairly infer 
that the dynasty claimed to be Chandra-vansi , or descended from that 
luminary. This conjecture is strengthened by the terms 
used in the next sloka. The phrase 
in the fifth sloka sounds redundant, but I am unable at present to suggest 
a better reading. The last half of this sloka, which dwells on the blue- 
black faces of rival kings, sounds very poor and tautologous in the translation, 
though not so bad when read in the original. The sixth sloka extols with 
the usual hyperbole the prime minister, under whose superintendence the 
sctsana was drawn up, the king being presumed to be above such petty 
concerns. It may indeed be possible that the gift was in reality the 
minister’s, though made, as a matter of form, in the king’s name. The phrase 
does not denote that the minister in question was a veritable 
Scsevola, but is used by the poet in the sense that his left hand alone was 
more than sufficient to overpower his enemies. 
* For tlie appellation of Damodara, vide Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, Part IV. 
It li 
