1877.] 
II. Banerjea— Note on a Copper-plate from CuttacJc. 
149 
Note on a Copper-plate Grant found in the Record Office of the Cuttack 
Collectorate.—Dy Babu Rangalala Banebjea, Deputy Collector , 
Cuttack. 
(With a plate.) 
This document was found by me in an old box in the Record Office 
whilst engaged in drawing up a report on the condition of the records. The 
box contained a number of old deeds of grants in the Devanagari, Persian, 
Bengali, Marhatti and Uriya characters ; these were the remnants of avast 
variety of such documents, said to have been filed by the original holders, 
before the Collector Mr. Kerr in 1810, when the province was settled for 
the first time. Up to this day applications are filed before the Collector, 
for a copy, or for the original, of one or other of these documents. Unfor¬ 
tunately no proper register has been kept with reference to these important 
records, and there is nothing to shew by whom the plates were filed before 
the Revenue authorities. The deed is inscribed on three oblong plates of 
copper, each measuring 8" x 64". The first plate has the inscription on one 
side only ; the second, on both sides ; and the third on the upper half of the 
inner side. The three were originally held together by a ring, for which 
the plates were pierced, the hole being eight-tenths of an inch in diameter. 
The ring is lost. The writing is in an antique form of the Kutila charac¬ 
ter. 
The record commences with some very prurient poetry, describing 
the personal charms and Arcadian loves of the nymphs of Kataka, the 
numerousness of its majestic elephants, the shining whiteness of whose 
tusks overshadowed the bright autumnal moon, and the freshness and 
coolness of the gelid breezes which stirred the waves of the Mahanadi, and 
allayed the langour of its love-sick maidens. 
After this exordium the record goes on to state that in the glorious city 
on the banks of the Mahanadi, there lived a king named Janamejaya, and 
from him came a lord of men called Yajati, whose fame had spread over 
the three regions of the universe, and whose prowess had, without any exer¬ 
tion, subdued his enemies. This panegyric is immediately followed by the 
well-known royal titles of the Gupta dynasty, adding the word “ Trikalin- 
gadhipati or.“the lord of the three Ivalingas” ; the 
name of Bhava Gupta and that of his successor, literally “ the adorer of his 
feet”, S'iva Gupta are then introduced, and after them follows the mandate 
of the latter to his courtiers, officers and other subjects to this effect, that he, 
