Fragment of a plate from Baigram EpiDoc Encoding Amandine Wattelier-Bricout intellectual authorship of edition Arlo Griffiths DHARMA Cambrai DHARMA_INSBengalCharters00050

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Copyright (c) 2019-2025 by Arlo Griffiths.

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 Revised the encoding Started initial encoding of the inscription

pitrā śivanandinā ca śvaśuraśivanandi vasādaṅ gacchanti ruca dīnārikkyakulyavāpavi saṅgar̥hya sa devakulavā ya ca vaṭagohālīkhi

rodha Upacaya Eva nandivaṅganandiya yīkṛtya śīgoUli stuno doṇavapaca ri yūyaṁ svakarṣaṇā

saṅgar̥hya The intended reading may have been upasaṅgr̥hya. Although not occurring in the Baigram plate, there are several occurrences in related inscriptions. See, e.g., the Raktamālā grant #2, line 9 and the Tāvīra grant, line 10. śīgoUli If this is indeed what was written, the intended reading must have been śrīgohāli. On this toponym best known from the Baigram plate, see 3.1. doṇavapaca The intended reading was sthalavāstuno droṇavāpacatuṣṭayaṁ. See the Baigram plate, lines 9 and 16–18. ri Perhaps restore/read catvāri 4?

I found this fragment by chance during perusal of the Museums of India website, which indicates that it is preserved at the Indian Museum, Kolkata, under accession number A20050/9085.http://museumsofindia.gov.in/repository/record/im_kol-A20050-9085-18. Accessed in May 2024. Subsequently, I learned from Ryosuke Furui that he has seen the fragment in that very museum, and was able to make the photographs that he has kindly allowed me to publish. The website indicates dimensions 4.9 × 4.7 cm, and provenance from Baigram in Bangladesh. Although no mention of this fragment is known to me from any printed publication of the colonial or post-colonial periods, the information about provenance is borne out by several correspondences with the well-known Baigram plate.

The contents, to the extent recoverable, reveal a clear connection with the Baigram plate, because the name Śivanandi figures there too, as father of the purchasers Bhoyila and Bhāskara (line 3–4: āvayoḥ pittrā śivanandinā), as does the toponym Śrīgohālī. It is remarkable that this fragment contains several incomplete akṣaras — a kind of error not encountered with such frequency, if at all, in other inscriptions of the corpus. Nevertheless, the fragment is a valuable little scrap of information, revealing that the known Baigram plate must have been part of a hoard, that would have contained two or more plates forming the archive of a particular shrine or family, like the Damodarpur plates (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5).

First published by Arlo Griffiths (). This digital edition reproduces that publication.

II.439-40