Sanjeli Copper Plates

Sanjeli, Gujarat · regnal year 3 of Toramana · Sanskrit

The Sanjeli copper plates are a set of Sanskrit donative inscriptions issued in the third regnal year of Toramana at Sanjeli (modern Gujarat). The plates record donations from a guild of traders settled at Sanjeli — and crucially they list the home cities of those traders: Vadrapalli, Ujjain, Kannauj, Mathura, and Mandasor.

Why it matters

The geographic spread of the trader guild — from Mathura in the north to Mandasor in the centre — is direct evidence that Toramana’s fiscal authority reached well beyond the Hindu Kush by his third regnal year. The Maitraka dynasty of Valabhi (493–776 CE), which acknowledged Hunnic overlordship in its early generations, occupies the same coastal commercial zone. The Sanjeli plates fit Toramana into the western-Indian commercial economy as a sovereign, not as a raider.

Sources

• Sanjeli Copper Plates of Toramana, regnal year 3
• Bakker, The Alkhan (2020) — section on Maitraka overlordship
• Bhandarkar, Epigraphia Indica