A New Inscription of the Pāṇḍuvaṃśins of Dakṣiṇa Kosala

Abstract

This is the first notice, edition, and translation of a royal order in Sanskrit, engraved on a set of three copper-plates kept in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The inscription is dated to the seventh year of the reign of Nannarāja I, king of the Pāṇḍuvaṃśin lineage active in Dakṣiṇa Kosala in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. The inscription provides important new information about a family of engravers, probably relocated from Śarabhapura to Sirpur, who served both the Śarabhapurīya and Pāṇḍuvaṃśin courts. The plates further suggest that Nannarāja I, as the first Pāṇḍuvaṃśin king of South Kosala, continued the epigraphic traditions of the Śarabhapurīyas, whom he may have served with his father Indrabala in his early career before the conflicts which brought him to power.