157 
1887.] R. Mitra— Donative Inscription of Vidyadhara BJianja. 
being otherwise, though the era used has often caused, in the absence 
of precise indications, considerable trouble to antiquarians. It would 
seem that the practice of issuing copper patents was recent in the 
country where Vidyadhara issued his grant; at any rate his court 
pandits must have been very ill-informed about the fundamental re¬ 
quirements of title-deeds, not to adopt the niceties of conveyancing 
terminology. I have stated above that the letters are of the Kutila 
type merging into the modern Devanagarl, and this fact would suggest 
the idea of their being between four and five hundred years old, and the 
deed to belong to the fourteenth or the earlier years of the fifteenth 
century of the Christian era. In the present state of my information, 
I regret, I cannot speak with greater precision. 
The concluding part of the deed gives the names of the attesting 
witnesses. The first name is that of the minister, Bhatta Stambha 
Deva, w T ho put his £ mark ’ on the deed for its ratification. The Sanskrit 
word used to indicate this is Idnchhita , which means £ marked,’ but I 
suppose it is intended to imply the impressing of the deed with the 
great seal of the State. The epithets applied to his name are not very 
clear. The first word is the most doubtful; it reads very like S'rishthi 
which probably stands for S’reshthi, a ‘ banker.’ This man came from 
the Kalinga country, was a worshipper of S'iva, whence Mahddevya , and 
endowed with great energy, tejahi/ca. The last word is of doubtful im¬ 
port. The second witness is named Kausika. He caused the grant to 
be ‘ entered ’ (pravesita) in the Bdbbd. Kausika has no epithet of any 
kind attached to his name. He was obviously an officer of an inferior 
grade, and he has not even the courtesy Sri assigned to him. The 
word bdbbd is not Sanskrit. I take it to be the sanskritized counterpart 
of the Arabic Bdb, which in the plural form of Abivab or cess became 
current from the date of the first settlement of the Muhammadans in 
this country. One meaning of the word is a book, chapter, or section, 
and I imagine it stands here for a registry book or that chapter 
of it in which a record was kept of rent-free grants. I draw this in¬ 
ference entirely on the strength of the word pravesita ‘ entered.’ The 
composition of the deed is attributed to STi Khamba, the minister of 
war and peace. The engraver was one Kshasali Kumarachandra. In 
this I take Kumarachandra to be the personal name and Kshasali the 
name of his caste. 
Translation. 
May that which can destroy the life of the wicldcr of the flowery 
arrow (Cupid) ; to whose mass of light the weak crescent is an object of 
overthrow ; which is the refulgent lamp for the illumination of the re- 
U 
