Indian Palaeography c15.s7.t1.1

c15.s7.t1.1

These inscriptions have been found in the upper valley of the Mahanadi river, which flows through the jungles of Chhattisgarh and falls into the Bay of Bengal in Orissa. The only well-known historical place in this area is Śrīpura, and it is not unlikely that its older name was Śarabhapura. This region produced two different styles of writing: (i) the one seen in the Arang plates of Bhīmasena II, already described,¹ which shows influence from the north received through the Uchchhakalpas and the Parivrājakas, and (ii) that seen in the Arang plates of Mahā Jayarāja and the Raipur plate of Mahā Sudevarāja (Pl. XV. 6). These inscriptions carry further the angular sub-variety of the hollow square head-mark type of the Vākāṭaka inscriptions; (iii) still later a local angular style developed, as is seen in the Pipardula copper plate of Narendra (Pl. XV. 7), which, properly speaking, is a development from the solid square head-mark type. In this inscription the head-mark is a long solid rectangle, placed on the top left of the verticals. This type may have been borrowed from the Gaṅgas of Kaliṅga. Between (ii) and (iii) the head-marks are the only distinction. In other respects they exhibit similar features. But there is a definite change in these inscriptions from those of the Vākāṭakas. Firstly, they copy only the later sub-variety of the Vākāṭaka inscriptions, which exhibit a special preference for angularity, and further they are distinguished by their greater stress on the verticality of the letter forms. Secondly, even if these long verticals remain unnoticed, no one can mistake the new influences as seen in the medial vowels and also the forms of some letters—influences which are traceable only to the Gurjara inscriptions of the sixth century A.D. Therefore the date of these inscriptions must lie towards the close of the sixth or the beginning of the seventh century A.D. A still later survival of the hollow square type is seen in the Rajim plate of Tīvaradeva, which has been rightly dated by Fleet in the eighth century A.D. (Fleet, no. 81). The new change in the medial vowels is seen in the use of the circle type of the medial *i* and *ī*, which, though known in the inscriptions of Malwa and Gujarat in the fifth century A.D., was not used in this region in the Vākāṭaka records. The Śarabhapura inscriptions must have derived this feature from the Gurjaras, whose influence probably reached this region after the fall of the Vākāṭakas. That the influence is from the Gurjaras, and not from the Chālukyas, is proved by the use of at least three letters: *kha* with its larger rectangular looped base, *ta* with its angular hook reduced to a mere line attached to the right vertical, which is slightly curved, and *la* with its upper curve extended downwards. Other minor influences may be traced in the form of *tha* having a loop within a rough oval, the preference for the looped *na* and *ṇa*, the use of the Deccani *ḷa* (not found in the earlier inscriptions of this region), and a new type of the conjunct *jña*, in which *ña* has a loop on the left. It should not be confused with *ṇa*. We may also note the form of the *jihvāmūlīya*, which resembles that of *ma*, and the form of the initial *au*, which has a curved base in the ‘z’-form with an additional top curve to the right.