Abstract
Six early copper plate charters of the Pāla dynasty of eastern India introduce petitioners requesting the reigning king to grant tax-free land to either a Buddhist monastery or a temple of Viṣṇu or Śiva established by them. The structure and content of such charters are similar to yet somewhat distinct from contemporary copper plates recording direct land grants made by the Pāla kings. By analysing the representation of petitioners in different segments of a copper plate inscription, the article shows that they are the primary donors seeking the king’s ratification of property transfers made by them. Consequently, in acknowledgement of their role in the donative act, the term petitioner-donors has been coined to refer to them. What enriches the group of Pāla petitioner-donors is the presence of both royal and private individuals, one of whom was the ruler of a Southeast Asian kingdom. On the basis of the profile of the six petitioner-donors, the article classifies them into three distinct categories, each of which registered its donative activity at a different locus within the Pāla domain. A comparative analysis of the eulogies (praśastis) of the petitioner-donors shows how the power balance was worked out between them, on the one hand, and the Pāla kings from Dharmapāla to Gopāla II, on the other, in the period between the late eighth century and the third quarter of the ninth century.
The article is structured around a small corpus of six copper plate charters of the period between the late eighth century and the third quarter of the ninth century
Profile of the Petitioner-donors
Text and Context
The six copper plates record land donations made during the reigns of the earliest five Pāla rulers of the main line whose inscriptions are extant—Dharmapāla, Devapāla, Mahendrapāla, Śūrapāla I and Gopāla II. 3 Given the absence of a complete sequential Pāla king list and the lack of information on the exact number of years ruled by each king, approximate dates can be assigned to these charters which are dated in the regnal years of the kings who issued them. Along with these six charters, another group of four copper plates which record direct royal land endowments are associated with the main line. It comprises Dharmapāla’s donation at Nālandā (most likely to the Buddhist establishment there), Devapāla’s gift to an individual brāhmaṇa and Gopāla II’s munificence to two brāhmaṇas individually. 4 Like the petitioner-donor records, the direct royal grants were issued by the king, and both types of early copper plate land grant charters seem to have been drafted and prepared by the Pāla administrative machinery. The available evidence indicates that a basic level of standardisation in both the shape and format of the two types of early Pāla copper plates was achieved only by the time of Devapāla, a fact which, to a large extent, accounts for the atypical elements in the physical appearance and in the configuration of the text in some of the charters issued by his predecessor, Dharmapāla. 5
The six land grant copper plate charters associated with petitioner-donors share their basic structure and character with contemporary direct royal land transfers. The texts of almost all the 10 known copper plate charters issued between the reigns of Dharmapāla and Gopāla II are engraved in the Sanskrit language and the Siddhamātṛkā script on the obverse and reverse of a single, rectangular sheet of copper. Each of them carries the dynastic seal of a Buddhist dharmacakra flanked by two seated deer along with the name of the issuing king below. A standard Pāla copper plate charter begins with an auspicious formula, followed by five sequential sections: first, a verse invoking the Buddha; 6 second, the section—in verse—providing the genealogy and eulogy (praśasti) of the king issuing the copper plate; third, the portion—in prose—recording the geographical and administrative details of the grant along with specifications of the donee; fourth, imprecatory and benedictory verses; and fifth, names and descriptions of the emissary/executor (dūtaka) and the engraver. 7
While both types of early Pāla charters adhere to the basic format, the main component which distinguishes the copper plates associated with petitioner-donors is a second praśasti section, in verse, which usually reads like a supplement to the main body of the charter since it appears most frequently after the references to the emissary and the engraver. Similar to the first praśasti section, which serves as the model, the second praśasti focuses on the genealogy and eulogy of an individual, the petitioner-donor. The other distinguishing feature of the charters referring to petitioner-donors is that the prose section outlines the procedure through which the petitioner-donor placed his or her request for land before the king through the intercession of the dūtaka.
It should be noted that even though they subscribe to a common pattern, the format and content of the six charters associated with petitioner-donors are not exactly identical to each other. To give a few examples, the second praśasti is missing from the Khalimpur and Lucknow Museum charters; the Indian Museum charter carries the petitioner-donor’s praśasti, but its placement is unusual; and in the Khalimpur charter, the process leading to the king authorising a land transfer at the request of a subordinate ruler is summarised in a single sentence instead of the more detailed narratives in the other charters. The three charters which most closely resemble each other are Nalanda, Jagjibanpur and Mohipur.
The two distinctive characteristics of the charters associated with petitioner-donors need to be discussed at length, beginning with the prose section, followed by the content of the second praśasti. Copper plate charters featuring petitioner-donors reveal that the process which culminated in the issue of a copper plate by the king ratifying the land donation began with a dūtaka, conveying the individual’s request for land to the king. 8 In most of the six copper plates under study, the prose section begins with the king, from a royal camp of victory on the river Bhāgirathī, 9 addressing, in first person plural (the royal ‘we’), a long list of people who have been approached (samupagata), which includes royal employees and resident cultivators. Using a formulaic phraseology, the king says that he has been orally informed of the petitioner-donor’s appeal by a dūtaka, literally through the mouth of the dūtaka (dūtaka-mukhena vayaṁ vijñāpitāḥ). 10 What the petitioner has conveyed to the king is reported in direct speech, usually in first person singular. 11
The petitioner-donors generally conveyed at last four basic details: first, the location and religious affiliation of the temple or monastic establishment set up by them; second, the name and location of the landed property wished to be gifted to the religious donee; third, specific activities to be funded at the temple or monastery; and fourth, the list of recipients to whom the merit generating from the gift was to accrue. 12 Usually, the narration of the petitioner-donor’s verbal communication concludes with him or her requesting the king to grant a precise portion of property (dadatv = iti). Thereafter, the king declares his approval through a statement, again in first person plural, that having been informed of the petitioner-donor’s request (asmabhis = tadīya-vijñāptyā), he has granted the aforementioned property by issuing a copper plate (śāsanīkṛtya).
In both types of Pāla charters, it is the responsibility of the dūtaka to communicate the orders of the king relating to the land endowment to donee and the various stakeholders, mainly officials and members of the village community. In the charters involving petitioner-donors, the dūtaka has an additional function of relaying the petitioner’s appeal to the king. For example, in the Indian Museum charter, the dūtaka relaying mahāsāmanta Bhadraṇāga’s plea to Dharmapāla is extolled for his erudition in a verse which suggests that till date Vedavācaspati (preceptor of the gods) has not discovered the source of the great ideas of the unsullied dūtaka Śakradāsa, which are scattered amidst the whole, conquered earth, and that dūtakas of kings seem to take deep breaths, reacting to his works. 13
Petitioner as the Primary Patron
A close reading of the narrative around the petitioner–dūtaka–king trio in the six charters reveals a process in which the dūtaka lobbies for the ratification, by the king, of a gift of land being made by the primary donor. For the primary donor, the ratification of the endowment and the consequent issue of a copper plate (functioning as the title deed of the granted land) 14 were of prime importance since that completed the legal act of transferring land, along with privileges and exemptions which the king/state alone could authorise, the key element being the accordance of tax-free status. 15
There are three clues that add up to the identification of petitioners as primary donors and which consequently justify the application of the term petitioner-donors to them. The first is the inclusion of the second praśasti section focusing on them; second is their agency in the acquisition and distribution of religious merit (puṇya); and third is their right to decide how the income generated from the transferred property was to be utilised. The three pointers which establish the petitioner-donor’s key position in the act of land transfer are analysed sequentially below.
The praśastis of the petitioner-donors are shorter than the royal praśasti, their Sanskrit poetry characterised by the use of hyperbole and an intermittent play on words through the device of double entendre or śleṣa. 16 In this article, the analysis of the second praśasti section moves from the first category of petitioner-donor to the next, keeping the spotlight on the main characters around whom it is woven rather than on their predecessors. As mentioned earlier, the second praśasti borrows heavily from the royal praśasti, a subject which deserves an in-depth analysis elsewhere. For the purpose of this article, it is important to bear in mind that the self-image of a Pāla sovereign is that of a universal emperor whose empire simultaneously encompasses the entire earth as well as a more circumscribed sphere of influence, defined by a conventional set of boundary markers in the four directions. The imperial ruler’s sovereignty, symbolised by his marching elephants, is acknowledged by all subordinate rulers. The Pāla sovereign alone rules over the entire earth by exterminating his enemies by the strength of his arms and the might of his army, bestowing widowhood on the wives of the latter.
In the Nalanda charter, the 10 verses eulogising mahārāja Bālaputra’s Śailendra dynasty (Śailendravaṁśa) begin by tracing his ancestry from his paternal grandfather, the king of Yavabhūmi (Central Java). 17 Both his grandfather and father are not named but referred to by their epithets, vῑravairimathana and samarāgravīra respectively, a pattern found in some inscriptions of the family. His mother Tārā is said to be the daughter of king Dharmasetu of the Soma lineage (Somakula). 18 What is striking about the verses on Bālaputra is that compared to his grandfather and father, his own sovereignty is played down. His imperial status is conveyed through merely two epithets, of which one refers to a host of kings bowing down to his lotus-like footstool (narendra-vṛnda-vinamat-pād-āravind-āsanaḥ) and the other portrays him as an expert in crushing the pride of all the lords of the earth (sarv-orvīpati-garva-kharvaṇa-caṇaḥ) (v. 31). Instead, his image as a Buddhist is highlighted by recording his devotion to Śauddhodana (Buddha), and by describing him as the wealth (artha), friend (mitra) and beauty (śrīya) of the Buddhist saṅgha (v. 32). He is also equated with two divine sons—Śauddhodhana (Buddha) and Skanda (Kārttikeya) (v. 31).
Upinder Singh convincingly argues how Bālaputra’s eulogy reveals the perspective of the Pāla court panegyrist. According to her, though the charter acknowledges Bālaputra as an independent contemporary, the level of paramountcy even in his own geopolitical sphere was not considered equivalent to that of the Pāla king. Compared to Devapāla, Bālaputra’s lineage is not as extensively defined, the precise nature of his greatness is not spelt out, and he carries the humble title of mahārāja vis-à-vis Devapāla’s titles of political paramountcy—parameśvara, paramabhaṭṭāraka and mahārājadhirāja. 19 Singh’s assessment of the representation of the Pāla–Śailendra relationship is corroborated by a direct statement in Śūrapāla I’s Lucknow Museum plate referring to the king of Suvarṇadvīpa (Suvarṇa-dīp-ādhipa) having bowed down to his father. 20
Furui, the editor of the Indian Museum charter, draws attention to the unusual placement of the second praśasti, which occurs between the list of addressees, on the one hand, and the narrative around the petitioner–dūtaka–king trio, on the other. 21 From the five verses devoted to him and his paternal ancestry going back two generations, it is known that Bhadraṇāga belonged to a family of merchants-turned subordinate rulers in Bengal. 22 His mother’s name, Ahaṇā, is mentioned but nothing is said about his maternal lineage. Portrayed as the mark of the invincible Nāga lineage (durjaya-Nāga-vaṃśa-tilakaḥ) (v. 18), Bhadraṇāga neither acknowledges any overlord nor is his relationship with the contemporary Pāla king Dharmapāla mentioned. His kingly attributes can be identified through the tropes of his bearing the burden of the earth with ease, causing the sorrow of widowhood to the wives of the leaders of the enemy troop, and the keenness to tame Lakṣmī since childhood (v. 17), all of which are derived from the Pāla archetype. Bhadraṇāga’s proficiency in martial matters is underlined by describing him as one who gave protection (abhayadaḥ) to great soldiers in battle (v. 17) and referring to his unhindered entry into the camps of kings (v. 18). 23 The last pada of verse 18 was probably meant to be a subtle play on the name of the lineage, Nāga, which, among other things, is a synonym for an elephant. 24 Certainly, the imagery of Bhadraṇāga’s unhindered movement (avārita-gatiḥ) through royal camps (kṣoṇībhṛt-kaṭakeṣu) is reminiscent of a charging elephant, while the reference to the stream of donation (dāna-pravāhaṃ) appears to parallel the flow of ichor from an elephant’s temple.
A comparison of the praśastis of the mahāsenāpatis in the Jagjibanpur and Mohipur plates brings out two connected yet varied representations of army commanders during the reign of early Pāla kings. 25 Like mahāsāmanta Bhadraṇāga, both Vajradeva of the Jagjibanpur plate and Kokkāka of the Mohipur charter were born in families which had access to military–political power. Vajradeva’s family base is unknown but Kokkāka belonged to a family of subordinate rulers (sāmanta vaṃśa) which had been in the service of the kings of Samataṭa in Bengal’s eastern extremity (v. 28). While Kokkāka’s paternal genealogy is traced back to three generations, Vajradeva’s ancestry goes back to two generations. Kokkāka’s mother Cundādevī is said to be the daughter of one Pārāśadatta, but Vajradeva’s mother Kalyāṇadevī’s parentage is not stated.
The praśastis of both Vajradeva and Kokkāka harp on their valour on the battlefield. Interestingly, both the Jagjibanpur and Mohipur charters employ the analogy of a sacrifice for a battle in which the petitioner-donor is the champion. According to the former, in a gory battle scene in which clarified butter-like enemies were offered as oblation into the sacrificial fire of the arms (śastra-hutāśane) amidst the chanting of incantations, Vajradeva was the hero, flooding the battlefield with blood flowing like water from the temples of elephants brought down by his sword (v. 31). In the Mohipur charter, Kokkāka, the leader of the army (senā-nātha), is said to have sacrificed the arms of his enemies in the fire of his weapons (śastr-ānale) (vv. 34, 39).
Unlike mahāsāmanta Bhadraṇāga’s praśasti, which makes no mention of the royal house of Pālas, both the mahāsenāpatis acknowledge the suzerainty of one erstwhile Pāla king each. While Vajradeva’s father Nārāyaṇadeva had been appointed the chief (adhipati) of a territory called Dardaraṇḍi maṇḍala by king Dharmapāla (Jagjibanpur, v. 27), Kokkāka had been a military commander under Śūrapāla I, a fact conveyed through analogies of his being like the wings of a bird (pakṣiṇa[ḥ] bhuja) for the latter, a bridge over the ocean of battles (saṅgrāma-jaladhi-setuḥ) and a pillar, the support of the tottering world (vipanna-jagad-āśraya stambhaḥ) (Mohipur, v. 35).
The nature of Vajradeva’s and Kokkāka’s relations with the reigning Pāla king is carefully avoided in their praśastis, and they are both sought to be elevated to the rank of a king. On the whole, Vajradeva’s praśasti is in tandem with the tenor of the Jagjibanpur plate, which highlights the early Pāla kings’ expertise in battle, and specifically both Vajradeva and Mahendrapāla claim a close association with the goddess of victory, and are linked to an imagery of bleeding elephants wounded by their swords (vv. 15–16). 26 In the Mohipur plate, Kokkāka walks the tightrope between being a subordinate and a full-fledged ruler. The praśasti records that he had been bestowed with a bright, golden sceptre (ujvala-hema-danḍaṃ) (most likely by a Pāla king), and that he rides the best elephant worthy of a king (v. 39). His professed paramountcy comes through a laboured verse which uses the imagery of some sāmantas, located within an area closely corresponding to the conventional domain of an imperial ruler, putting on their heads nothing else but the dust of his feet (v. 37).
That the gift of land to religious donees is a pious, merit-generating act (puṇya kṛti, dharmmādhikāra, sat-kῑrtti, sukṛta-karmaṇ) is an idea that permeates the charters featuring petitioner-donors. 27 Like the Pāla kings in the royal endowments, the ostensible reason for petitioner-donors to donate land was to acquire religious merit (puṇya). And like the kings who are always the primary merit recipients in direct land endowments made by them, the petitioner-donors too obtain the merit accruing from land transfers sanctioned in all the six charters.
With the exception of the Pāla queen mother, all the other five petitioner-donors distribute the merit accruing to them, using a formulaic phraseology. Most often, petitioner-donors transfer merit to their parents, for the same goals to which they themselves aspire, that is, for the increase (abhivṛddhi) of religious merit (puṇya) and/or fame (yaśa). In the Indian Museum and Mohipur charters, in addition to parents, the beneficiaries include everybody and all sentient beings. 28 When the petitioner-donor transfers merit to everybody (sakalasya), the Pāla king is indirectly drawn into the merit circuit. However, in the Indian Museum, Nalanda and Mohipur grants, along with the petitioner-donor, the Pāla king too has agency in the acquisition and distribution of merit. Not only are Dharmapāla, Devapāla and Gopāla II direct merit recipients in the charters featuring petitioner-donors issued by them, they also have the authority to transfer it to others, a feature which technically makes them co-donors of the endowments. This is best evident in the Nalanda charter wherein Devapāla seeks to enhance his own fame (yaśa) and merit (puṇya) as well as that of his parents from the grant, and Bālaputra desires his own welfare (hitodaya), that of his parents and the world. 29
Petitioner-donors had considerable say in deciding the fate of the transferred landed property in the present and in the future. Leaving aside mahārāja Bālaputra, every other petitioner-donor is found to be specifying this detail in the course of his or her petition to the Pāla king. At times, the petitioner-donor is found to be mentioning additional stipulations concerning the donated property such as the assignment of a particular plot (Gomuṇḍak-ādi-bhūmi) in the Mohipur charter, a small rural market (haṭṭikā) and lowland (talapāṭaka) in the Khalimpur charter, or a neat demarcation of the usages to which the gift was to be put in the Lucknow Museum charter. 30 The petitioner-donors of the Jagjibanpur and Mohipur charters obtained a bonus privilege: they had the right to transfer, what appears to have been usufructuary rights, over a part of the donated property to people they chose and in the proportions decided by them. 31
Piety and Property
As many as four petitioner-donors, belonging to the first and second categories, established Buddhist monasteries to which they donated land. A single petitioner-donor of the second category patronised a temple dedicated to the worship of Nārāyaṇa (Viṣṇu), and the petitioner-donor of the third category set up an image of Śiva (as shown in Table 2). Since it is not possible to discuss the details of each petitioner-donor’s benefaction individually, this section outlines, in broad brushstrokes, the conceptualisation of religious institutions, the location and scope of property transferred to them, the donors’ access to property and the possible motivations which spurred the donations.
Recipient Religious Institutions
Notes: 1 Gandhakūṭī refers to a private chamber reserved for the Buddha in individual monasteries (sometimes within a complex), which had specifically titled monks or a monastic community attached to it (gandhakuṭi-vārika), and was recognised as an independent legal entity owning moveable and immoveable property, although it continued to remain an integral part of its monastery. See Schopen, ‘The Buddha as an Owner of Property’, pp. 268–278.
According to the second praśasti in the Nalanda charter, one of the factors which prompted Bālaputra, the king of Suvarṇadvīpa (Sumatra and Malay Peninsula) to build a monastery (vihāra) was the attraction of Nālandā’s excellent qualities. At this time, Nālandā, in south Bihar, was a renowned centre of learning in the Asian Buddhist world, and Bālaputra’s vihāra there is described as being white with lofty buildings plastered with stucco. 32 It is hard to say whether Bālaputra’s Nālandā endowment was indeed aimed at securing the support of the Pāla dynasty at a time when the end of direct Śilendra rule in Central Java was imminent, as suggested by Roy Jordaan. 33 Conceptually, what made such a trans-regional endowment possible, argues Upinder Singh, was the circulation of shared ideas between the two geopolitical spheres on kingship and sovereignty as well as the transfer of merit. 34
Of the four monastic establishments in north Bengal to which the second category of petitioner-donors transferred land, Somapura mahāvihāra, one of the premier monastic centres of eastern India, was founded by Dharmapāla, and has been correlated with the excavated stūpa-cum-monastery complex at Paharpur in Naogaon district of Bangladesh; and the Nandadīrghikā vihāra has been located on the Tulabhita mound at Jagjibanpur in the Malda district of West Bengal, the name of its founder-patron corroborated through excavated monastic sealings. 35 Antarāvanikā and Kaṅka-vāsaka, the toponyms associated with vihāras in the Indian Museum and Mohipur plates respectively, remain unidentified.
As pointed out by Furui, patrons such as the subordinate rulers and military commanders may be identified as vihārasvāmīns or the lay owners of monasteries, and references to whom occur in inscriptions and Buddhist literature. A vihārasvāmin or vihārasvāminī continued to be involved in the management of the monastery that he or she established. The monks affiliated to the monastery were obliged to utilise the grant for the purposes for which it had been made and in return the owner constantly accrued the merit generating from their repeated use (paribhogānvayaṃ puṇyaṃ). 36 Generally, the mahāsāmantas and mahāsenāpatis do not declare a personal faith in Buddhism, the exception being the Mohipur charter which records that Kokkāka caused to be built a vihāra out of his devotion to the lotus-like feet of the Buddha. The vihāra is said to be as white as moonlight, whose large and high rooms, appearing like the rising of oceans, house monks in red robes. The charter loftily projects the magnificent creation as stealing, like a thief, the dense sins of the Kali age. 37
An interesting feature of the charters transferring land to Buddhist institutions is that the donations are directed to envisioned residents of the monastery, who, along with the Buddha, are conventionally listed as all the Dharmanetrīs beginning with Prajñāpāramitā, the group (gaṇa) of avaivarttika Bodhisattvas (those firmly set on the path of enlightenment) and the monastic community (bhikṣu saṅgha) as an embodiment of the eight great persons (aṣta-mahā-puruṣa-pudgala) according to their ranks. 38
The grants made to Buddhist monasteries were to finance three things: one, worship (of the Buddha); two, multiple requirements of the monastic community; and three, repairs to and renovation of the monastic structure. 39 The commonly occurring set of three terms to denote specific ritual activities, involving oblations and charitable distribution of food respectively, includes bali, caru and sattra. References to the overarching form of worship by offering various items (pujā, pūjana) as well as food offerings specifically (nivedya) are infrequent. The formulaic provisions for the monastic community include clothes (cīvara), food (piṇḍapāta), beds and seats (śayan-āsana), preparation for disease (glāna-pratyaya), medicine (bhaiṣajya) and other requisites. At times, an additional provision for copying texts (lekhana) is included. 40 The stock expressions used in the charters to convey the scope left for repairing damages is khaṇḍa-sphuṭita-saṃskāra/samādhāna/ghaṭa.
Out of the six petitioner-donors, the two who supported Purāṇic Hindu cults were mahāsāmantādhipati Nārāyaṇavarman and mahādevī Māhaṭā. 41 While the subordinate ruler installed an image of Nārāyaṇa at Śubhasthalī in north Bengal, the queen mother set up an icon of Śiva, probably his phallic symbol (liṅga) at the celebrated Śaiva centre of Vārāṇasi, in eastern Uttar Pradesh. There are broad similarities in the nature of patronage extended by the two. Following a common practice of naming newly installed deities after the name of the patron, both appear to have lent their names to the images they established in temples built by them, which are referred to as Nunna-Nārāyaṇa and Māhaṭeśvara, respectively. Moreover, both the patrons made provisions for financing the performance of the temple deity’s worship (pūj-opasthān-ādi-karmaṇ; pujā-sattr-ādi) and catering to the needs of its attendants. In the Khalimpur charter, the attendants of the temple (devakula) are defined as Lāṭa brāhmaṇas, priests and others who wait upon the deity (pratipālaka-Lāṭadvija-devārcak-ādi-pādamūla). In the Lucknow Museum charter, a congregation (parṣad) of Śaiva teachers (ācāryas) appear to have been in charge of the temple, whose continued association is denoted by the reference to disciples (śiṣya) and their disciples (praśiṣya).
Compared to the Khalimpur plate (and the others in the corpus), the Lucknow Museum charter is remarkably imprecise about the details of the religious institution to which the petitioner-donor wished to direct the grant. The text does not specify if the deity was installed in a temple; the form of the deity is not given; and that Māhaṭā was the builder of the structure within which the deity was obviously housed is also not spelt out. While the queen mother’s patronage is inferred from the name of the deity, the cultic affiliation of the centre of worship is deduced from the description of its attendants. Her agency comes through only in the neat apportioning of the gift villages: while one set of two villages was earmarked for the ritual needs of the deity, the other set of two was to provide for the congregation of Śaiva teachers and their disciples. 42 Evidently, the queen mother had access to sizeable landed property, but whether it was part of the estates allotted to members of the royal family, and if so, whether it was exclusively earmarked for religious gift-giving remains unknown.
Mahāsāmantādhipati Nārāyaṇavarman may have built the temple of Nārāyaṇa within his own territory, as seems to have been done by subordinate rulers and military commanders who patronised Buddhist monasteries, although this is never explicitly stated in the charters. The strongest evidence for this is found in the case of mahāsāmanta Bhadraṇāga who established a vihāra in the village within which there were two land plots belonging to two religious establishments that he had established, earlier—a monastery (vihāra) and a smaller monastery (vihārikā), respectively. 43
Irrespective of the religious affiliation of the institution to which landed property was donated, the charters cite minute details while situating the location of gifted land. 44 Except the land assigned through the Khalimpur charter, whose exact geographical location is unidentified, the property transferred through the remaining five copper plates was either the settlements were the shrine or monastery had been established or else contiguous to them. 45 The Pāla land grant charters locate the donated plots of land in relation to administrative divisions, most frequently in descending order of bhukti, viṣaya, maṇḍala and vīthi/naya, corresponding to a province, a district and its further subdivisions, respectively. Except the endowments of mahārāja Bālaputra and mahādevī Māhaṭā, all the other land transfers were made within four separate viṣayas of the Puṇḍravardhana bhukti, an area which corresponds, at least until the time of the Pālas, to north Bengal. Both mahārāja Bālaputra and mahādevī Māhaṭā’s gifts of land were located in separate viṣayas within the Nagara bhukti, a unit which grew around the nucleus of ancient Pāṭaliputra or modern Patna in Bihar (as shown in Table 3).
All three categories of petitioner-donors made gifts of entire villages. Only two individuals within the second category—mahāsāmanta Bhadraṇāga and mahāsenāpati Vajradeva—did not grant entire villages. Bhadraṇāga transferred independent plots of land at two different places, and what Vajradeva gifted is defined as udraṅga, whose exact meaning in this context is unclear. The boundary markers of the udraṅga invoke a rural milieu identical to that occurring in most of the charters featuring petitioner-donors. 46
There is broad uniformity across the six petitioner-donor charters in land tenure, the types of exemptions and privileges and the duration of the grant, all of which are identical to those listed in contemporary direct royal land transfers. 47 The landholding tenure of all the six petitioner-donor grants was theoretically based on the principle of the rent-free enjoyment of land by one who brings it under cultivation for the first time (bhūmicchidra-nyāya) and the donees were to enjoy their gifts in perpetuity, the latter conveyed through the standard expression, ‘for as long as the sun, the moon and the earth endure’ (ā-candra-ārka-kṣīti-samakālaṃ).
The donated property which was allocated up to its boundaries (sva-sīmā paryanta) and/or with adjacent land (sva-sambaddha-bhūmi sameta) was accompanied most frequently by low land (sa-tala/talapāṭaka) and raised ground (s-oddeśa). Some of the additional transferred natural resources included grassland and pastures (sva-sīmā-tṛṇa-gocara), plants and trees, sometimes particular types such as mango and mahua (sa-pādapa/s-āmra-madhūka), place with water and dry land (sa-jala-sthala), and pits and barren spots (sa-gart-oṣara). The donee had accompanying rights over additional taxes (s-oparikara), and was to enjoy all the royal revenue and offerings (rāja-kulīya-pratyāya-sameta). The recipient was exempted from all the burdens (parihṛta-sarva-pīḍā), nothing was taken away (akiñcit-parigrāhya) and the land was spared the entry of irregular or regular troops (sa-cāṭa-bhaṭa-praveśa). The transfer of daś-āparādha/daś-āpacāra and caur-oddharaṇa rights gave the donee the power to punish or realise fines for the 10 offences as well as the right to punish or levy fines from thieves or probably the right to recover stolen property, respectively. 48
Land Transfers
Conclusion
The analysis of the format and content of six copper plate land grant charters, featuring petitioners requesting early Pāla kings for tax-free land to religious institutions built by them, establishes that such individuals were in fact primary donors who were seeking the king’s authorisation on property transfers made by them, and therefore should be identified as petitioner-donors. They were key participants in land donations of the eighth and ninth centuries, who stipulated the utilisation of gifted land, determined the distribution of religious merit accruing from the act and frequently formed the subjects of a second praśasti in the charters. The representations of three separate categories of petitioner-donors operating from three different locales provide instances of how kings of the main line, from Dharmapāla to Gopāla II, negotiated power relations with a contemporary king of a distant domain, a close family member, subordinate rulers, and senior administrative and military functionaries. Despite the distinct profile of each category, what is common to the three categories is their tacit acknowledgement of the overarching authority of the Pāla kings, perhaps best indicated by the fact that the petitioner-donors did not issue the charters themselves. Such charters, issued by the reigning Pāla king, conform to the basic format of contemporary copper plates recording direct royal land grants of the dynasty, and yet are distinguished by the addition of a second praśasti section, in verse, and the inclusion, in the prose section, of a narrative around what the petitioner-donor conveyed to the king, through an intermediary, the dūtaka.
Among the three categories of petitioner-donors, the most well-rounded profile is that of the second category of petitioner-donors, comprising mahāsāmantas and mahāsenāpatis in the Pāla heartland of north Bengal, almost all of whom inherited a close association with administrative–military power. The increasing clout of such individuals is strongly reflected in their ability to establish religious institutions, Buddhist monasteries in particular, and gift substantial tax-free property to sustain them, which enabled them to probably maintain continued influence over their management. The titles mahāsāmanta, mahāsāmantādhipati, mahāsenāpati and mahāsainyapati indicate the existence of stratified power relations, in which the second category of petitioner-donors was subordinate to the Pāla sovereign but superior to sāmantas and senāpatis. That mahāsāmantas and mahāsenāpatis had an extensive resource base in land comes through in the scale of their collective patronage. 49 Undoubtedly, this category would have posed a challenge to the authority of the early Pāla kings, and there would have been underlying tensions between the two. 50 The copper plates symbolise a delicate compromise in which the Pāla king had the upper hand: he retained the royal prerogative to issue charters but accommodated the second, aspirational praśasti in which the image of the subordinate rulers and military commanders, particularly their martial prowess, approximates that of the Pāla king. In such praśastis, the mahāsāmantas and mahāsenāpatis are projected as independent entities bearing no allegiance to the reigning king.
Interestingly, when the Śailendra king Bālaputra, constituting the first category of petitioner-donor, built a monastery in south Bihar and gifted land to it, he too was cast in the mould of a subordinate ruler, dismissing the extraordinary character of this royal, trans-regional endowment, which inaugurates a centuries-long tradition of royal endowments by South-East Asian kings in the subcontinent. 51 However, in contrast to the subordinate rulers and military commanders within the Pāla domain, the trait which places Bālaputra at par with his co-donor and Pāla counterpart is not his valour but his devotion to the Buddha. Incidentally, Bālaputra’s gift of five villages forms the largest single donation by a petitioner-donor.
Finally, the reason why the queen mother Māhaṭā, constituting the third category, did not issue a charter to record her gift of land to a Śiva temple built by her in eastern Uttar Pradesh, is probably because Pāla royal women did not have the authority to issue donative records on their own and required the intervention of the king. 52 In the charter issued by her son, Māhaṭā’s participation in public religious life is completely downplayed, most conspicuously by the exclusion of a second praśasti centred on her, followed by the rather careless documentation of the specifics of her patronage. Consequently, although she (along with a subordinate ruler) made the second largest endowment, hers is the most pared-down portrayal among the three categories of petitioner-donors.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to A. D. Mathur for patiently guiding my way through the inscriptions, Upinder Singh for her invaluable comments on the first draft, the two anonymous referees for their significant interventions, Ella Datta for engaging with the article critically, and Ryosuke Furui, Sarath Pillai and Shreya Sinha for promptly dispatching material inaccessible to me.