Nagardhan and Pauni, two sites in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, have yielded remarkable ancient inscriptions that offer a window into the area’s rich historical tapestry. At Nagardhan in Nagpur district, archaeologists uncovered copper plate charters associated with the Vakataka dynasty’s rule, including records issued by a powerful queen-regent.

Meanwhile, in nearby Pauni town of Bhandara district, a trove of early Brahmi inscriptions on stone and copper has come to light, revealing Buddhist culture's and distant dynasties' imprint on this settlement. These discoveries were not serendipitous finds but the result of focused excavations and local finds in the mid-20th century that drew scholarly attention. The inscriptions, dating from roughly the 2nd century BCE up to the 6th century CE, connect Vidarbha’s locales to broader Indian history, from early Buddhist communities under the Satavahana Empire to the later Gupta-Vakataka period.

Each inscription, whether etched on copper plates or stone pillars, provides factual details about political authority, religious life, and administrative practices of its time.

1. Nagardhan Copper Plate Inscriptions (Nagpur District)

Nagardhan, a village near Ramtek in Nagpur district, was identified by historians as the site of ancient Nandivardhana, a capital of the Vakataka kingdom in central India.

Concrete epigraphic evidence for this emerged when copper plate inscriptions were found here, shedding light on dynastic events and governance in Vidarbha during late antiquity.

One of the most important records is a set of copper plates issued by Queen Prabhavatigupta in the 5th century CE. Prabhavatigupta was a Gupta princess married into the Vakataka dynasty, and after her husband’s death, she ruled as regent for her young son. Her copper-plate charter, discovered in the region (often called the “Poona plates” because they later came to light in Pune) is dated to the 13th year of her son’s reign.

It records in meticulous Sanskrit prose a land grant of a village named Danguna (identified with modern Hinganghat) to a Brahmin. Notably, the inscription opens with a genealogy of Prabhavatigupta’s lineage, proudly tracing her heritage to her father, the Gupta Emperor Chandragupta II, and her grandfather Samudragupta. This emphasis on her Gupta ancestry, including invocation of the Gupta family deity Lord Vishnu, is a striking detail that underscores the influence of the Guptas in Vakataka affairs. It also reflects the Queen’s personal authority: as regent, she had the power to issue royal land grants in her own name, an unusual position for a woman in that era. The Nagardhan plates confirm that during Prabhavatigupta’s rule, Nandivardhana (Nagardhan) was indeed functioning as a major administrative centre, as long believed from textual sources.

Another significant epigraphic find from Nagardhan came in 1948, when a set of three copper plates was unearthed by a resident and handed over to scholars for decipherment. Known as the Nagardhan Plates of Svamiraja, this charter is dated to the year 322 of the Kalachuri era, corresponding to 573 CE. The plates were issued from Nandivardhana by a ruler named Nannaraja, who describes himself as the brother of Svamiraja and “meditating on the feet” of his elder brother, a phrase indicating that Svamiraja was the paramount king while Nannaraja governed under him. Intriguingly, the inscription does not explicitly name their dynasty or overlord, suggesting these were local feudatories whose allegiance was assumed to be known or whose autonomy was considerable.

The content of the Svamiraja charter reveals two grants of land. The first records the donation of two nivartanas (a measure of land) in a village called Chinchapattika, made at the request of an assembly of officials. In this case, an organised council, described as a samūha (committee) of a corporation (gana) of high officers (mahāmātra), petitioned the ruler for a grant, indicating a level of local governance or guild involvement in public land transactions. The second part of the inscription records the grant of an entire village named Ankollika by the king (either Svamiraja or Nannaraja acting on his behalf), on the occasion of a solar eclipse. This grant was a religious donation made at an auspicious moment, consistent with the practice of making charitable gifts during celestial events.

The beneficiaries were learned Brahmins versed in various Vedic traditions, reflecting the era’s custom of kings endowing Brahmana scholars with tax-free land. The Nagardhan plates are well-preserved and written in a box-headed Brahmi script typical of the 6th century, with a rectangular copper seal attached. Epigraphist V. V. Mirashi, who published the first study of these plates, noted that the record’s language is Sanskrit and that it contains a couple of metrical verses at the end, but is mostly in formal prose. Importantly, this discovery extended the known political history of the region into the late 6th century. It demonstrated that Nandivardhana/Nagardhan remained an active administrative site even after the fall of the Vakatakas, under whatever local or regional powers were in play at that time. The involvement of a mahāmātra-gana (corporation of officers) in the land grant is a rare feature, making this one of the few Indian copper-plate charters where a corporate body affixed its own seal to the document. As a whole, the Nagardhan copper plate inscriptions offer invaluable factual insight into the lineage of local rulers, the influence of the imperial Guptas in Vidarbha, and the socio-political mechanisms like land grants and governance that prevailed in ancient Maharashtra.

2. Pauni Inscriptions (Bhandara District)

Pauni is a town situated on the banks of the Wainganga River in Bhandara district, and it has proven to be an archaeological treasure trove of early historic India. Excavations in the late 1960s revealed that Pauni was once a fortified city with a large Buddhist stupa complex, making it a key centre of the Vidarbha region during the Sunga and Satavahana periods.

A wealth of inscriptions has been discovered here on various media, stone railings, pillars, slabs, and even copper plates, each illuminating different facets of Pauni’s past. The majority of the Pauni inscriptions are short donative records in the Brahmi script, dated roughly between the 2nd century BCE and 2nd century CE. Scholars Richard Salomon and others note that excavations at Pauni yielded “a few dozen” Buddhist dedicatory inscriptions, mostly labels and brief records of donations, very similar in language and style to those found at the famous Buddhist sites of Sanchi and Bharhut. These inscriptions are typically in Prakrit and follow a formulaic pattern, for example, announcing that a particular individual (and sometimes their family) has donated something, such as a structural component of the stupa or a railing pillar, for the benefit of the Buddhist monastic community. In Pauni’s case, the donors include local men and women, some of whom carry names with the suffix “Nāga”, suggesting connections to indigenous Naga tribes or a Naga cult in the area. One remarkable fragmentary inscription from Pauni even mentions the serpent king Mucalinda, the mythical Naga who sheltered the Buddha. This is considered the earliest epigraphic reference to Mucalinda in India. The fact that a bas-relief and inscription relating to Mucalinda were found here indicates the integration of local Naga worship motifs into the Buddhist art of Pauni by around the 2nd century BCE. Taken together, the donor inscriptions show that during the Sunga-Kanva era, the Hinayana Buddhist establishment at Pauni enjoyed generous patronage from a broad base of society, underscoring the town’s importance as a regional religious centre.

Numismatic and inscriptional evidence from Pauni also tie this site to major political powers of ancient India. Archaeologists recovered coins of the Satavahana dynasty (including issues of King Satakarni) in the stupa area, confirming that Pauni was under the Satavahana sphere of influence around the 1st century BCE–1st century CE. In fact, finding Satavahana-era currency in Pauni’s ruins helps historians affirm that this part of Vidarbha formed the northeastern extent of the Satavahana Empire during that time. Equally fascinating is the discovery of a stone memorial pillar inscription dedicated to Rupiamma, a name which turned out to have connections far beyond Maharashtra.

The pillar, found at Pauni and now in the Nagpur Central Museum, bears a Middle Brahmi inscription identifying the monument as the “sculpted pillar (chhaya-khambo) of Lord Prince and Great Satrap Rupiamma”. Palaeographic analysis dates it to the 2nd century CE, and the title “Mahakshatrapa” (Great Satrap) reveals that Rupiamma was a Saka ruler, likely part of the Western Kshatrapa dynasty, or potentially a local subordinate of the far-reaching Kushan Empire. Historian V. V. Mirashi studied this Pauni inscription in 1965 and noted that Rupiamma is called “Kumara” (prince or son), implying he was either a young Satrap or literally the son of a Great Satrap.

The presence of this artefact in Pauni is significant on multiple levels. It suggests that in the 2nd century, the influence of North Indian or northwestern dynasties had penetrated deep into central India. If Rupiamma was affiliated with the Western Satraps (the Saka rulers of Ujjain and Gujarat), his Pauni pillar marks the southernmost known reach of their authority, well beyond the Narmada River, which traditionally marked the limit of their territory. Alternatively, if he was allied with the Kushans, it bolsters evidence that Kushan control or influence extended into the Vidarbha region during Kanishka’s era – an intriguing possibility suggested by some scholars. In either case, the Rupiamma pillar inscription effectively ties the small town of Pauni to the geopolitics of 2nd-century India, bridging regional archaeology with imperial history.

Pauni’s importance did not fade with the end of the early historic period. In 1967, yet another inscription came to light, this time a copper-plate charter, showing that Pauni remained within the orbit of later dynasties. While workers were digging the old fortified rampart of Pauni, they discovered a set of four copper plates with an attached seal. These were the Pauni plates of Pravarasena II, a Vakataka king of the 5th century CE. This charter, written in Sanskrit in the box-headed Brahmi script, records a perpetual land grant of 50 nivartanas of land to a Brahmin named Durgārya, and is explicitly dated to the 32nd regnal year of Maharaja Pravarasena II. Before this find, Pravarasena II was known from other inscriptions to have ruled at least 29 years, so the Pauni plates extended his documented reign by three years and provided a later benchmark for Vakataka chronology.

The Pauni copper-plate inscription is particularly valuable because it confirms that this area of Bhandara was under Vakataka control in the mid-5th century and that Pravarasena II’s administration made land grants in distant provinces. The charter’s discovery so far east (one of Pravarasena’s other known grants was found in Madhya Pradesh) suggests the Vakatakas held sway over Vidarbha’s eastern parts and possibly maintained garrisons or officials at Pauni. The find spurred professional excavations of the Pauni site in 1969–70 by the Archaeological Survey of India and Nagpur University, which then uncovered the full extent of the stupa and monastery ruins. Thus, the inscriptions of Pauni span a broad timeline, from inscriptions contemporary with the early Buddhist art of Ashoka’s successors to those of the Gupta-Vakataka age, and collectively they portray Pauni as a nexus of religious, cultural, and political currents over centuries.

The Nagardhan and Pauni inscriptions serve as enduring written testimonies etched in metal and stone, allowing scholars to reconstruct key chapters of Indian history that unfolded in the heart of present-day Maharashtra. Through the copper plates of Nagardhan, we learn of a queen’s governance, her diplomatic ties to the Gupta empire, and the protocols of land administration in a 5th–6th century kingdom. Equally, the inscribed copper and stone relics from Pauni reveal an ancient city’s layered heritage, from local devotees supporting Buddhism during the time of the Satavahanas, to an intriguing marker of Saka power far from its base, and finally to integration into the Vakataka realm. Importantly, these findings underscore how regions like Nagpur and Bhandara, often thought peripheral, were well-connected to major political and religious developments subcontinent-wide.

The fact that a single site can yield inscriptions mentioning figures as diverse as a Gupta princess and a Saka satrap speaks to Vidarbha’s role as a crossroads of cultures. By avoiding myth and focusing on concrete epigraphic facts, historians have pieced together a more accurate narrative of Vidarbha’s past from these artefacts. The continued analysis of such inscriptions, including deciphering their scripts, language, and contextual details, has brought to light names of places and people long forgotten, anchoring legends in evidence. In an era when physical evidence of ancient events is scarce, the Nagardhan copperplates and the Pauni epigraphs stand out as reliable primary sources. They not only corroborate information gleaned from classical texts but also often fill in the gaps, providing precise dates, local details, and authentic voices from the past. As more discoveries emerge and existing inscriptions are studied with new techniques, our understanding of the Vidarbha region’s historical significance only deepens.

What is clear already is that these inscriptions have transformed silent ruins into eloquent storytellers, ensuring that the legacy of early rulers, monks, and common folk of Nagardhan and Pauni is preserved in the annals of Indian history.