South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

SALEM PLATES OF GANGA SRIPURUSHA ; SAKA 693

and when it is long. It is yet to be investigated whether this feature has anything to do with accent and why it is met with in some speech-forms and not in others. The following instances, however, show the consonant after r to be short or single ; ratn=ārka l. 26, and nṛipatir=babhūva l. 39.

The inscription belongs to the time of the Western Gaṅga king Śrīpurusha. A good number of inscriptions, on stone and copper, of the time of this king, varying in dates from the beginning to the end of his long reign, have been discovered and published, specially in the volumes of the Epigraphic Carnatica and the Annual Report of the Archeological Survey of Mysore. The genealogy of the Gaṅga kings given in the present record, from Koṅgaṇivarma-Dharma-Mahādhirāja up to Śrīpurusha, is already known from published record,^[1] No fresh historical facts, cither with reference to the earlier members of the family or with reference to the king Śrīpurusha, come to light in this record. Duggamāra is mentioned in ll. 44-5, and, from the expression putrāya Duggamārāya in l. 48, there can be no doubt that this Duggamāra was no other than one of Śrīpurusha’s sons of that name. We learn from two stone inscriptions from Muḷbāgaḷ^[2] in the Kolar District of the Mysore State that this Duggamāra was governing Kuvaḷāla=nāḍu 300 and Gaṅga 6000 under his father

The wife of Duggsmārā was Kañchiyabbā who is described in ll. 44-6. She was to him as Padmā was to Nārāyaṇa, Gaurī to Pinākin, etc. One of the two Muḷbāgal inscriptions^[3] referred to above states that Kañchiyabbe, wife of Duggamāra, was governing Āgaḷi. The importance of the present record lies in the fact that is given in ll. 38-44 the pedigree of this Kañchiyabbā for three generations, starting from king Nannappa, who had a son Śivarāja, whose son was Gōvindarāja, Gōvindarāja’s wife was Vinayavatī whose father was king Vikramāditya, ‘lord of the four directions’. To Gōvindarāja and Vinayavatī was born Indarāja, and Indarāja’s elder sister was Kañchiyabbā, consont of Duggmāra. The way in which these princes are mentioned shows that they belonged to a royal family. In the present state of our knowledge it is indeed difficult to identify them. The names Nannappa, Gōvinda and Indarāja are, however, reminiscent of similar names in the Rāshṭrakūṭa dynasty,^[4]. But we do not know of any Nannappa who lived towards the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century A.D. with whose family the Western Gaṅgas had to do anything either matrimonially or politically.^[5]

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^[1] Cf. Spurious Islampur plates of Vijayāditya ; above, Vol. XII, pp. 50-3 : Dēvarahaḷḷi plates of Srīpurusha E. C., IV, Ng. 85.
^[2]E. C., X, Kl. Mb. 80 and 255.
^[3]E. C., X, Kl. Mb. 80.
^[4] The Daulatabad plates of Śaṅkaragaṇa (above, Vol. IX, p. 197) inform us that the paternal uncle of (Dhruva-) Nirupama was Nanna, brother of Kṛishṇarāja (I) and son of Kakkarāja (I), Śaṅkaragaṇarāja is mentioned therein as the son of Nanna. The Tiwarkhed and Multai plates (above Vol. XI, p. 279 ; Ind. Ant., Vol. XVIII, p. 234) also mention a certain Nannarāja, whose father was Svāmikarāja, grandfather Gōvindarāja and great-grandfather Durgarāja.
^[5] End of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century A. D. is the period to which Nannappa of our inscription can be assigned, as his great-granddaughter Kañchiyabbā lived in A. D. 771 the date of the record. The Daulata bad plates referred to in the previous footnote are dated in Śaka 715 or A.D. 793 and so the Nanna mentioned therein with be too late for the Nannappa of our record. Similarly Nannarāja of the Tiwarkhed plates dated in Śaka 553 or A. D. 631 will be too early. The date of the Multai plates, viz., Śaka 631 or A. D. 709-10, however, agrees with the period to which we have assigned Nannappa of our inscription. The Multai plates have been considered to be not genuine (Altekar, Rāshṭrakāṭas, p. 7). If we assume that the date supplied by the Multai plates is genuine, then the Nannarāja mentioned therein can be identified with Nannappa of our record, since there is no difficulty about the period of the two names. This identification can gain further support from the fact that the name Gövindarāja, grandfather of Nannarāja of the Multai plates, is repeated in our inscription in the name of the grandson of Nannappa. But, so far, we have not come across any reference about the Western Gaṅgas coming in contact with the Rāshṭrakūṭa family situated so far in the north as Multai in the Central Provinces and, in view of this, it becomes difficult to uphold the above identification.