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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA NANDSA YUPA INSCRIPTIONS less than 17 Brāhmaṇas are required for a sattra ;[1] they are both ṛitviks (priests) and yajamānas (sacrificers). Since a Kshatriya could not be a ṛitvik at the time of our record, he could not himself perform the sattra ; he could only get it performed for him by Brāhmanas officiating on his behalf. All the Brāhmaṇas had to be of the same gōtra and kalpa ; [2] otherwise there would result a conflict at the time of offering the Āprī oblations. It is indeed a strange irony of fate that there should be an uncertainty about the full name of the king, whose exploits are described on the pillar, though he had taken the precaution of getting the record engraved twice on it. In inscription A, the concluding part of l. 5, which his name occurred, has been peeled off ; in inscription B the relevant portion in ll. 15-16 has been so heavily damaged, that no confident reading of the text is possible. After mentioning the donor’s father’s name as Jayasōtna, the records proceeded to give his own name. It is given in apparently eight letters. The first two of these letters are Sōgi. In inscription B sō, which is the last letter of l. 15, appears to have a subscript, and the next letter gi, which is the first letter of l. 16, looks more like gni than gi. But if we examine these letters in inscription A, l. 5, it becomes clear that neither sō nor gi had any subscript. The reading Sōgi may therefore be taken as certain. The succeeding two letters are quite illegible in inscription A. Inscription B (l. 16), however, shows that the first of them was certainly nē ; the next letter, (which is the 3rd letter of l. 16), appears most like a damaged tuḥ. These four letters may therefore be read as Sōginētuḥ, meaning of the leader of the Sōgis ’ :
It appears that before giving the king’s personal name, an epithet of his has been given. Who then were the Sōgis, whose leader the king claims to be ? The mystery is solved by a fragmentary inscription which is being edited at the end of this paper as C. This inscription was also found in the village Nāndsā, where the yūpa bearing inscriptions A and B was discovered. It is also inscribed on a pillar, standing not far away from the other yūpa. Palæography shows that its time is not far removed from that of the former inscriptions. Unfortunately this inscription is extremely fragmentary, but its 7th line distinctly refers to a Mahāsēnāpati Bhaṭṭisōma, who is styled Sōgi ; cf. Mahāsēnāpatisya Bhaṭṭisōmasya Sōgisya ma-. It is therefore clear that the Mālavas had a subclan called Sōgi, probably so-called after its gōtra, Saugi. [3] The hero of our record was a leader of these Sōgis and was very proud of that fact. His personal name is therefore preceded by the little Sōginētuḥ. The Sōgis still exist in Mewar as a caste group, and have been so recorded in the census of 1941. The 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th letters of l. 16 of inscription B give ; the personal name of the hero. Of these the 5th and the 6th letters, though considerably damaged, definitely look like sōma, and the succeeding letter, though partly obliterated, looks like syā. The space between ma and syā is not greater than the ordinary space between two consecutive letters of this record. What therefore looks like the remnant of a damaged letter after ma would probably be nothing more than a mere damage in the stone surface. The 5th, 6th and 7th letters of l. 16 are therefore sōmasyā. The hero’s name therefore ended in sōma, as was the case with that of his father and that of the Sēgi general, mentioned in inscription C below. It was preceded by only one letter, but it cannot be made out with certainty. It is considerably damaged. But a portion of what remains looks like a part of ga or śa, with perhaps an ī-mātrā above it. I would therefore suggest, not without some diffidence, that the letter may have been Śrī ; one can hardly think of any other suitable monosyllabic letter to precede Sōma. The king’s name was therefore most probably _______________________________________________
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| Śabara on ibid. VI, 6, 1.
| ibid. VI, 6.1, See also the commentary of Śabara