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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA NALAJANAMPADU OLD-TELUGU INSCRIPTION (ll. 8 and 12) which seems to be the form intended, can be compared as regards the formation with pālēru ‘ tenant ’. It seems to have been formed from palle ‘ village ’ and the plural suffix –ār. Envānru (l. 9) may be compared with envōr (enva ōr+, another form of -ār) found in a Kannaḍa inscription[1] of c. 700 A. C. but singular instead of plural. Pa[ri]si (ll. 11 and 12) is uncertain and might be paḷisi or palisi or pā for pa, without altering the meaning, as Telugu pariya means fragment, pālu, share and Kannaḍa has pari meaning ‘ divide ’, palisu, pālisu meaning ‘ distribute ’. Reward is pala (l. 17) (not phala) as in the earliest Telugu and Kannaḍa-Sanskrit inscription.[2] Ekalu (l. 19) may be for ēkālu cf. ēkālamu meaning ‘ when ’.[3] The final u is for the emphatic suffix and might be for ū or uṁ. The form of la (ll. 18 and 21) is found in later inscriptions and also in early Kannaḍa.[4] What Caldwell terms euphonic permutation is rare, the only clear example being vuṭṭu (l. 10) for puṭṭu in mūnru vuṭṭu. In the other inscriptions it is more frequent. So pandumbu, meaning ‘ ten tūmus ’, sēnu for chēnu, meaning ‘ field ’, sēsiri for chēsiri[5] ; again gānu for kānu meaning ‘ see,’ vē-guḷḷuvu, meaning ‘ 1000 families ’ (vē+kuḷḷuvu), vē-seruvuḷu meaning ‘ 1000 tanks ‘ (vē+cheruvuḷu) in the Mālēpāḍu inscription.[6] In the Addaṅki verse inscription the change is common but in the short prose portion rare, only enubadi vuḍlu, meaning ‘ 80 puṭṭas ’ being found (puṭṭalu replaced by vuḍlu).
The grammar of the present inscription is closer to Tamil and Kannaḍa than is modern Telugu. The plural termination kaḷ or gaḷ is already worn down to la via gala which actually occurs in the Bezwada inscription of Yuddhamalla (c. 880 to 926), in brōlagala meaning ‘ cities ’[7] (b is the form assumed by p after ṁ).[8] The ending nru for nominative masculine singular has been mentioned above. The neuter form mbu later mu already appears but seems to be confined to words considered to be of Sanskrit origin. Ichche (l. 13) meaning ‘ he gave ’ corresponds to ichchenu in modern Telugu and ichchen in literary Telugu for M. F. N. sing, and N. pl. Possibly the twin consonant is a sign of the past tense. The suffix āku (l. 13) corresponds with modern Telugu gā ; Tamil āka, āki, Kannaḍa āga are similar in origin. Agu (ll. 17 and 22) ) is a future or optative, cf. Kannaḍa akum[9] and perhaps Tamil āka in the Daḷavānūr inscriptions.[10] The uninflected form of the nominative used as a genitive (paḷḷeyari, l. 8) is found in certain nouns in modern Telugu, but the genitive termination na (aśvamēdhaṁbuna, l. 16) is, in modern Telugu, only found in words such as āyana meaning ‘ his ’ and in relative participles. The former survives in modern Tamil and Kannaḍa. and the latter only in Tamil. From the linguistic point of view an early attribution is therefore perfectly feasible. From the epigraphic point of view it has been stated above that the characters are those of the seventh and eighth centuries. They may be somewhat later, for the style of the Telugu alphabet was changed in the course of the reign of the Eastern Chalukya Vijayāditya III (circa 844 to 888 A. C.) ; his later inscriptions were engraved in a new more regular style, which is found later in the Bezwada inscription. The latest date of this inscription is, therefore, c. 850. Historically, the date can be pushed back still further. It has been argued above that Paramēśvara must be a proper name, but there still exists the bare possibility that during a pro- _________________________
[1] Ind. Ant., Vol. X, p. 103. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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