Indian Epigraphy c11.t7.10

c11.t7.10

The party, in whose favour the grant was made, sometimes consisted of a single person and sometimes of a number of persons. Some of the royal charters record grants of land to hundreds of donees often specifying the allotment to each one of them. The Chammak plates³ of Vākāṭaka Pravarasena II record the grant of a village to 49 Brāhmaṇas without specifying their shares. The donees in this case were probably entitled to enjoy equal shares of the gift village. The Brāhmaṇa donees of the Nidhanpur plates⁴ of Bhāskaravarman are more than 200 in number and their shares in the land are carefully specified. The largest list of donees is probably found in the Karandai plates⁵ of Rājendra-coḻa I, which enumerate the names, etc., of no less than 1073 Brāhmaṇas. The donees were generally Brāhmaṇas whose names are often mentioned along with those of their fathers⁶ and occasionally also with those of their grandfathers⁷ and great-grandfathers as well as those of their *gotras*, *pravaras*, *caraṇas* and the Vedic *śākhās* to which they belonged.⁸ In some cases, later inscriptions mention the place from which a donee’s family originally hailed.⁹ The list of donees sometimes throws welcome light on the social history of the country.¹⁰