Harsola copper plates

The Harsola copper plates are a set of two 949 CE Indian inscriptions that record the grants of two villages to a Nagar Brahmin father-son duo. The grants were issued by the Paramara king Siyaka II. The copper plates were discovered in Harsol (or Harsola) in present-day Gujarat state.

Besides the Paramara ancestors of Siyaka, the inscription mentions the names of two other rulers, who have been identified with Rashtrakuta kings. This indicates that the Paramaras were feudatories of Rashtrakutas in their early days. Unlike the later Paramara inscriptions, this inscription does not mention the Agnikula myth, which claims that the sage Vashistha conjured the dynasty's founder from a fire pit on Mount Abu.

One line of the inscription has been interpreted by some historians as evidence of the Rashtrakuta patrilineal ancestry of the Paramara royal house. According to others, this line only suggests that the mother of the Paramara king Vakpati I came from a Rashtrakuta family.

In early 20th century, the plates were in the possession of a Visnagar Brahmin named Bhatta Magan Motiram, who was a resident of Harsol. It is not known when and how the plates came to be in his possession. According to Keshavlal Dhruv, the first two plates ("Grant A") were found joined together by a ring, and the other two plates ("Grant B") were found loose. There is a Garuda symbol (the Paramara royal emblem) on only one of the plates, and the two grants were issued to a father-son duo by the same king on the same day. Therefore, it can be inferred that originally, all the plates must have been joined together.

D. B. Diskalkar noticed these plates in 1922-23, and published a transcript in a Gujarati journal Puratattva. Later, he and K. N. Dikshit published a revised transcript with translation in Epigraphia Indica Volume XIX (1927).

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