Indian Epigraphy c10.s5.6

c10.s5.6

Sometimes several documents were preserved together. An urn containing four sets of copper plates was dug out from the ground near the foot of a tree at the village of Andhavaram in the Srikakulam District of Andhra Pradesh.⁵ The grants were issued by different rulers of different ages to different donees and may have been interred in the ground when the owners left the village at one time on an occasion like pilgrimage. The sets of plates were suspended by means of an iron rod passing through their seal-rings, which was inserted across the deliberately broken rim of the urn having a wide circular mouth. The urn was covered by a hemispherical lid and the plates, kept inside it in paddy-husk, were found in a good state of preservation.¹