Deopara Prashasti (Deopara Inscription):

 Deopara prasti is an important scriptural source of ancient Bengal. The script contains some highly appreciative verses that shed significant light on the history of the Sen dynasty, especially Vijayasen. Umapatidhar, a famous Sanskrit poet of the Sen era and minister of Lakshmansen, has written this book.


 The inscription on a stone piece is 5 km from Rajshahi district town. C.T. Metcalf was discovered in 1865 from a village called Deopara under Godagadi police station in the west. Excavations led by Kumar Sarat Kumar Roy of Dighapatia in the vicinity of the site of the script have led to the discovery of a wide area, where there are rocky artifacts, old Dighis(Big Ponds), and ruins of ancient houses (e.g. the majestic Pradyumneshwar temple). The present script can be seen on the banks of a large dighi known as Paduswara. Vijaypur, which is mentioned as the capital of the Sen kings in Dhoyi's Pawandoot Kavya, is identified by the scholars as identical to the village of Vijayanagar, located south of Deopara village.

 Metcalfe was the first to publish the inscription in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Number 34, Part-1). Later, in the first volume of Epigraphia Indica, Professor Kilhorn edited the script with a view of criticism. The script has 32 lines of equal length. The stone on which the script is engraved is 0.97 m/ 0.6 m in length-width, but the amount of the inscribed part is 0.82 m / 0.45 m. The size of the character is approximately 3/8́́. The engraving carving completes its work with wonderful skill and deep care. The inscription mentions the reign of King Vijayasen and the genealogy of the Sen kings of Bengal. In verses 5-9, the Sens originate from the Karnat of South India and are described as Brahmakshatriya.

 Verses 14-22 Vijayasen is portrayed as a great king or famous king of ancient times. All these verses say that Vijayasen Nanny, Veer, Raghava, Vardhan imprisoned the kings and defeated Gaur, Kamrup, and Kalingaraj. He also sent a naval expedition along the course of the Ganges to defeat the kings of the West ('Western Circle'). Vijayasen built a high-quality and majestic temple of Pradyumneshwar and excavated a dighi (verse no. 22-29) near it. The script then describes an idol installed inside the temple (verse no. 30-31) and finally, there is the identity of umapatidhar and engraver, the author of the book. The entire script contains 36 verses composed in a variety of rhythms such as Vasanttilak, Shardul biritrit, Surgdhara, Prithvi, Mandakranta, Malini, Shikharini, Indrabajra, and tribals.

 The letters used in the script are very similar to the original Bengali characters. Rakhaldas Banerjee, who studied the letters of the Deopara prescription, has clearly shown that at this time, the morphological development was completed in about 22 cases of the Bengali alphabet. For this reason, the Deopara amplitude can be called the precursor of the modern Bengali alphabet. It is true that in the Deopara Prasti, a highly admirable account of the Sen king, especially Vijayasen, has been recorded. But this tone of praise certainly proves that Bengal achieved a glorious place in history under Bijoysen.

References:

1.       Aksadul Alam (2012), "Deopara Prashasti", in Sirajul Islam; Ahmed A. Jamal (eds.), Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.), Asiatic Society of Bangladesh

2.      Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay (1919), The Origin of the Bengali Script, University of Calcutta available in Wikimedia Commons