A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.28

c6.28

Almost the whole Eastern Chālukyan history, and much of that of the Chālukyas of Bādāmi are also based on copper-plate charters. Some of the Chola charters on copper plates attained enormous length, being engraved on a large number of good-sized, well-turned-out plates strung together on huge rings with a big circular seal soldered on them; the most conspicuous examples are the Leyden grant of Rājarāja (21st year)—so called because it happened to fall into the hands of the Dutch and pass into the custody of the Leyden museum—the Tiruvālangādu and the Karandai plates of Rājendra I, and the Chārāla plates of Virarājendra (7th year), the long Sanskrit praśasti of which is a copy of the Kanyākumāri stone inscription of the same monarch. The copper plates of the Vijayanagar rulers often employ a variety of the Nāgari script, known as Nandi Nāgari, for Sanskrit. Sometimes, but very rarely and only in recent centuries, the charters were inscribed on more precious material than copper; a charter granted by Vijayarāghava Nāyaka of Tanjore to the Dutch in 1658, and another to the same power by Ekoji in 1676, the former in Telugu and the latter in Tamil, are both engraved on silver plates now in the Batavia (Jakarta) museum. But copper is the metal prescribed in the law books and the most powerful rulers of the land did not employ any other metal.