Indian Epigraphy c11.t8.29

c11.t8.29

A high officer was generally entrusted with the task of drafting or writing out a charter. His name is mentioned in many cases and occasionally also his designation and his father’s name. By way of illustration, reference may be made to the Sasanakota plates which simply record: ‘this tāmra-paṭṭikā (i.e. copper-plate [charter]) has been written by Somaśarman’,³ while Dadda’s grant has: ‘[this] has been written by Durgabhaṭa’s son Saṅgulla, the Mahāsāndhivigrahika (i.e. chief officer in charge of peace and war or the minister of external affairs)'.¹ The mention of the names of the officer and his father is sometimes helpful in the determination of the chronology of their masters when the order of succession of the latter is otherwise uncertain. Reference may be made in this connection to the help rendered by such details to the elucidation of certain knotty problems in the genealogy and chronology of the Gaṅgas of Śvetaka and the Somavaṁśīs of South Kosala.²