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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
POLITICAL HISTORY how Samudragupta after passing through Mahākāntāra proceeded immediately south-wards to defeat the rulers of Kurāḷa and Pishṭapura. The third prince vanquished by Samudragupta in South India was Maṇṭarāja of Kurāḷa. The correction of Kaurāḷaka into Kairaḷaka proposed by Fleet is too egregious to carry conviction, because it involves corrections in two syllables of a name which consists of three.1 Maṇṭarāja has therefore to be taken as king, not of Kērala, but of Kurāḷa or Kōrāḷa. Dubreuil2 thinks the latter to be the correct form of the name, but he makes no attempt to identify it. Barnett, however, identifies it with Kōrāḍa,3 and Aiyangar with Kurdha, the Railway junction Khurda,4 perhaps the same as Khurda on te South-Eastern Railway from Calcutta to Madras. Kielhorn, on the other hand, taking Kuraḷa as the correct form, identifies it with Kunāḷa, mentioned in the Aihoḷe inscription, as having been reduced by Pulakēśin II of the Chalukya family.5 And both have been identified by him with the well-known Kollēru (Collair) lake between the Godavari and the Krishna rivers. Dubreuil, however, sees no reason “why Kurāḷa should be identified with Kunāḷa.” The only argument he urges in support of his position is that “the names themselves do not resemble each other.”6 But this is just what they do, the three names Kunāḷa, Kurāḷa and Kollēru corresponding so closely in sound. Kielhorn himself has asked us to compare ālāna=āṇāla, Achalapura=Alachapura, and karēṇū=kaṇērū. And we may also note that l and n are interchangeable in Pāli and the Prakrits. No philological scruples can thus upset the equation Kunāḷa=Kurāḷa=Kuḷāra=Kollēru. And we have further to note that after conquering Kōsala, whereas Pulakēśin subjugates Kaliṅga, Pishṭapura and Kunāḷa from north to south, Samudragupta subjugates Kurāḷa, Pishṭapura and Kōṭṭūra from south to north.
The fourth king of Dakshiṇāpatha that we have to consider is Mahēndragiri of Pishṭapura. Pishṭapura is the same as the fortress of that name captured by the Chalukya king
Pulakēśin II,7 and is the modern Piṭhāpuram in the East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh.
Fleet admits that it is natural to divide the text in such a manner as to give us the names
Mahēndragiri of Pishṭapura and Svāmidatta of Kōṭṭūra. But giri or gīr, he says, is a denominational suffix attached to the names of Gōsāvīs and cannot be accepted as a suitable termination
for a king’s name. He has, therefore, divided the text into most embarrassing names and has
been followed by other scholars, setting at naught both grammar and common sense. This
textual question has been treated at length elsewhere by us, and here we simply consider
whether Mahēndragiri is an unsuitable name for a king as Fleet has thought it to be. In the
first place, it is not clear why giri is taken by Fleet as a suffix of an individual name. He should
have taken Mahēndragiri as one name denoting the mountain Mahēndra which is looked
upon as an object of sanctity, especially in the Telugu country. And if the names of the sacred
rivers have been adopted as individual names among Hindu females, the names of the sacred
mountains have similarly been adopted among Hindu males. Thus mountain names like
Himādri, Hēmādri and Śēshādri are found used as proper names snot only in modern but
also in ancient India.8 If Śēshādri (Vēṅkaṭagiri) is a sacred mountain in the Tamil, Mahēndragiri is so in the Telugu country. And if Śēshādri can be the name of an individual, there is 1 CII., Vol. III, 1888, p. 7, note 1.
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