Page:Epigraphia Indica, Volume 2.djvu/37

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{Line 1.) Let us adore (him 17 who is) knowledge and bliss, the supreme Brahma, waited upon by Brahma and the other gods, — Mahadeva, the god of gods, the parent of the world !

The son of the illustrious king Gayakarna, the illustrious lord of men Narasim- hadeva, conquered the earth : may his younger brother, the sovereign lord, the illus- trious Jayasimhadeva, long be victorious !

(5.) Kesava, the son of the late Brahman Aladeva, named As taka (?) 18, caused that temple of Is'vara to be built.

The year 928, on Sunday the 6th of the bright half of Sravana, (the moon being) in (the nakshatra) Hasta.

(8.) The nay aha Kesava 's gotra is that of Katyayana, his place of residence the village of Sikha in Mapa ?]vaka.

The Suba of the Baroda or Central Division of the Gaikavad's State has sent me for decipherment three detached copper-plates, two of which belong to the Gurjaras of Bharoch, and one to an unknown line of kings. The two former are only second plates of the grants, and therefore do not contain genealogical and other personal details, while the last is a first plate and contains no information as to the date, donee, object of the grant, officers, &c.

This document is written on a plate, measuring about 8 inches by 3f, and is well preserved. It contains ten lines giving the usual injunctions and quotations from the Smriti regarding the inviolability of grants. The plate does not contain the name of the king or of the donee, nor a description of the object granted. But we have suffi- cient materials to identify the donor. The writer is the sdmdhivigrahikaA ditya- Bhogi k a. Bhogika, Dr. Buhler informs me, is " a small man not more than a Thakur of one or a few villages ; for bhogika occurs frequently in the list of the persons to whom commands are addressed, e. g. in the Kavi grant of Jayabhata (Ind. Ant., vol. V, p. 110). In the Desikosha its Prakrit equivalent bhoio is explained by grdma-pradhdna. 1

17 I.e., Mahadeva or Siva to whom all these epithets are applied. 13 Or possibly : ' The JJrahman, named Astaka, had {a son) Aladeva ; his son Kesava.' See note 13, above. 1 Dr. Buhler's PdiyalaohchMndma/mdld, v. 104 (gdmani bhoio ya gdmavai, p. 32). Dr. Diihler translates it in tbo glossary as " headman or lord of a village," and quotes bhogika from inscriptions. The Gujaidti lor bhogika or bhoio is bhiyo, and grdmapati or gdmavai is gdmetd. The word bhoga, from which bhogika is derived, means pdlana or " pro- tection," —see Amara, 111,23, and Mahes'vara's commentary on it, also ViSvakosha, v. 2G8 ; Mediidkosha, v. 15 of words ending in ga ; and TrikdndaSeshakosha, III, 120 (q~ra% S*J3Tlt ^ fa^l TO3*tfatTt I *ffa! *R ^T%'. ^<Hw?fKfa II Thus M U =ti according to these authorities would be an equivalent of ^T^f^T or "protector;" as au official term it may have sub- sequently acquired a technical meaning. D 2