Gayā (Bihar). Copper plate of a grant of Samudragupta
| Metadata | |
|---|---|
| Inscription ID | IN00004 |
| Title | Gaya Grant of Samudragupta |
| Alternative titles | |
| Parent Object | OB00004 |
| Related Inscriptions | |
| Responsibility | |
| Author | Dániel Balogh |
| Print edition recorded by | Dániel Balogh |
| Source encoded | |
| Digitally edited by | |
| Edition improved by | Dániel Balogh |
| Authority for | Own research. |
| Metadata recorded by | Dániel Balogh |
| Authority for metadata | |
| Metadata improved by | |
| Authoriy for improved | |
| Language | संस्कृतम् |
| Reigning monarch | Samudragupta |
| Commissioner | |
| Topic | |
| Date: | |
| Min | 354 |
| Max | 364 |
| Comment | Intrinsic Date: 9 vaiśākha 10 (era: ?regnal, Samudragupta). Basis of dating: intrinsic + reign of Samudragupta. The document is possibly a fake or at least a later replacement of a genuine original. The seal with Garuḍa is of the Gupta period however. |
| Hand | |
| Letter size | 0.5 |
| Description | Northern class, with some characters antique, others modern in form. Bhandarkar assigns the script to the 8th century, Agrawala to the 6th and believes the plate was made by the same forger(s) as IN00003. |
| Layout | |
| Campus: | |
| Width | 19 |
| Height | 17 |
| Description | Some damage halfway down the proper left side, where there is also a crack, and another smaller one at the top edge near the end of the first line. The size of the inscribed area is estimated. |
| Decoration | None. |
| Bibliography | |
| References | First noticed in Cunningham 1883: 53 (as a copper plate of year 40). First edited in Fleet 1888. Referenced in Kielhorn 1898-99: 71. Briefly described in Gaur 1975: 28 (Ind. Ch. 46). Genuineness discussed in Goyal 1993: 72-76. See also Shastri 1943-44, Majumdar 1944-45, Gupta 1953 and Gupta 1956. |
| Add to bibliography | Sohoni in Journal of the Bihar Research Society 52 (1966), pp. 20-28; S R Goyal in Journal of the Bihar Research Society 52 (1966), pp. 52-55. |
| Misc notes | Bhandarkar 1981:229 and Fleet (1888:255) both give the character size as 3/16″ (=5mm), but given that we have 15 lines on a 18 cm (7 1/8″) tall plate, this is too small. Compare the Nalanda plate (IN00003), with 12 lines on a 21 cm (9″). |