South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

The five plates measure 9½″X4½″X½″each in dimensions, and are held together by a circular ring 3½″ in diameter. The two ends of the ring are soldered into the back of an oval seal bearing in relief a boar to the left. All the sides of the plates, except the outer ones of the first and the fifth, are engraved. The rims of the plates being raised, the writing is well preserved. The plates together with the ring and the seal weigh 219 tolas.

The characters of this record closely resemble those of the Vakkalēri^[1] and Kēndūr^[2] plates of Chālukya Kīrttivarman II, with a very few variations. The medial short and long i are scarcely differentiated. I have, therefore, transcribed them either way according to requirements. Owing to the carelessness of the engraver, ka and ha have been in a few places written as ra and pa respectively and vice versâ.

About orthography one fact quite apparent is the careless engraving of the record, owing to which a very large number of mistakes have crept in. Many of them have been corrected either in the text or in the foot-notes. But some may have escaped my attention. Ri has been generally substituted for ṛi but in pṛiy-ātmaja (l. 25) we find exactly the opposite case. B has been substituted for v in svayaṁbara(l. 38) and saṁbatsarē (l. 56). Upadhmānīya has been used once only in pariah palāyamānair (l. 31). In some cases ri has been written in place of r preceding a consonant as in Harisha (l. 12), chikirishu (l. 68) and varisha (l. 72), while in varusha (l. 55) ru has been written for r. Ṭha has been used for ṭa in kaṇṭhaka (l. 26), and ghaṭhāpāṭhana l. 28). In svan=dātum (1. 70), the anusvāra has been replaced by n.

The language of the inscription is Sanskrit, and the composition is in prose, excepting the few verses at the beginning and the end.

The record refers itself to the reign of Chālukya Vikramāditya II and gives his genealogy thus :─In the Chaḷukya dynasty was born Polakēśin (I) ; his son Kīrttivarman (I) ; his son Satyāśraya (Pulakēśin II) ; his son Vikramāditya (I) ; his son Vinayāditya ; his son Vijayāditya and his son Vikramāditya (II). All the information about these rulers contained in this grant is already known to us from the Vakkalēri and Kēndūr plates of Kīrttiverman II ; for, the text of this portion of our grant is practically identical with that of the latter two. It is unnecessary, therefore, to deal with it here in detail. Some points, however, deserve mention. The Conjeeveram inscription^[3] of Vikramāditya II which is undated undoubtedly proves his entry into that city ; but it can be shown that the event must have happened before at least the date of the record under publication, viz., the Winter Solstice in Śaka 664 expired. As the Vakkalēri and the Kēndūr plates supply no more information about this king than what is contained in the present record, it must be taken that all the exploits of Vikramāditya recorded in them were accomplished before the date of this inscription. In one of the Paṭṭadakal inscriptions it is stated that Vikramāditya II conquered Kāñchī thrice.^[4] But the above three grants nowhere mention this fact.

King Vikramāditya II, on the occasion of the Winter Solstice falling in his eighth regnal year and after 664 Śaka years had elapsed, while his victorious camp was at Ādityavāḍa, at the request of Rāshṭrakūṭa Gōvindarāja, the son of Śivarāja, who is otherwise unknown, granted the village Naravaṇa, together with Chindramāḍa lying by the seashore of the Chiprarulanavishaya and bounded on four sides by the river Sonnē, the village Ambāḍa, etc., to Brāhmaṇas of various gōtras well-versed in the Vēdus and Vēdāṅgas. They were Dēggulisvāmin, the son of Durgganāgasvāmin, Nāgaḍi-Dīkshita, the son of Dōṇasvāmin, both of the Kauśika gōtra, Kontaḷa-Nārāyaṇa, Nannasvāmin and Dhanañjayaduggu . . . . . . . The

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^[1] Above, Vol. V, p. 202.
^[2]Ibid, Vol. IX, p. 200.
^[3]Ibid, Vol. III, p. 360.
^[4]Ind. Ant., Vol. X, p. 164, No. 100.