On the other hand, the evidence on the inscribed images reveals that the rapaka and samanta (feudatory subordinate chiefs) emerged as a major support group of Buddhism in early mediaeval period. The increasing evidence of the names of acaryas in early mediaeval Buddhism signifies their increasing roles in the Vajrayana tradition. The analysis of the inscribed images as well as the copperplate donation to Buddhism largely reveals rapaka, samanta (feudatory chiefs) and acaryas as major donors. The present paper reads and analyses some of the inscribed Buddhist images discovered in different parts of Odisha during exploration. In the process, it attempts to draw out some of the broader ritual and “religious” implications of what is typically treated as an “economic” transaction – namely, the transfer of land from royal to priestly control, which forms the heart of the copperplate’s function and formation. Drawing upon broader theoretical discussions concerning gift-giving in relation to economies and exchanges of religious prestige and royal power, it attempts to offer new perspectives towards gift-giving and the economy of the sacred in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. It focuses on inscriptions recording the granting of land by Buddhist kings to Brahman priests in medieval Bengal, and it hones in on the literary, oral, ritual, and performative elements of the inscriptions in relation to the spaces delineated by acts of granting. This article suggests that copperplate land-grant inscriptions may also provide an overlooked source of evidence for ideas about sacred space within and between South Asian religions. In research on premodern South Asia, land-grant inscriptions have typically been mined for historical and geographical data.
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