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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA SAUGOR STONE INSCRIPTION OF SANKARAGANA explanation is impossible in the present case as Vāmadēva does not denote the sense of any relative, but is apparently a proper name. Scholars have therefore offered several explanations of the expression Vāmadēva-pād-ānudhyāta, some of which are noticed below :─ (1) In translation the Khairhā plates of Yaśaḥkarṇa, R. B. Hiralal took Vāmadēva to be a name of Śiva. Most of the Kalachuri princes were devotees of Śiva.[1] The expression Vāmadēva-pād-ānudhyāta could therefore have been used in the sense of ‘ meditating on the feet of Śiva’. But in all these records Vāmadēva is mentioned with the paramount titles Paramabhaṭṭāraka, Mahārājādhirāja and Paramēśvara which are not known to have been used elsewhere in connection with the names of gods. It may perhaps be argued that the paramount titles were prefixed to the name of Vāmadēva (Śiva), because these Kalachuri kings believed that the kingdom belonged to the god and they only administered it on his behalf.[2] There is, however, no evidence of such a belief in any of their inscriptions. Besides, all these records describe the reigning king as Paramamāhēśvara, ‘ a devout worshipper of Śiva’, which would thus be superfluous. Again, as already stated, Vāmadēva himself is called Paramamāhēśvara in the records of the Kakreri princes, which clearly shows that Vāmadēva was a devotee of Śiva, and not identical with Śiva himself.
(2) Dr. Barnett suggests that ‘ these princes who are called Vāmadēva were perhaps so noted for their devotion to that deity that in the reign of their successors they were considered to have become a part of that god himself’.[3] This would, in a way, explain the use of paramount titles as well as the epithet Paramamāhēśvara in connection with the name Vāmadēva, but it is doubtful if such a belief was current at the time. Besides, it is unlikely that all these princes were so fervent devotees of Śiva that they came to be identified with that god immediately after their death. There is certainly nothing to warrant it in the eulogistic portions of their successors’ grants. (3) It has been recently suggested that Vāmadēva was the name of a Śaiva ascetic. While editing the Malkāpuram stone pillar inscription4of Rudradēva (Rudrāmbā), Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu first put forward the conjecture that Vāmadēva was identical with the Śaiva pontiff Vāmaśambhu mentioned in that record. This inscription, which is date Śaka 1183 (A. D. 1261-62), says that Vāmaśambhu’s feet were caressed by the garlands on the heads of kings and that even now (ady=āpi) the Kalachuri kings are honoured for worshipping his feet.[5] This Vāmaśambhu was second in spiritual descent from Sadbhāvaśambhu, the founder of the Gōḷakīmaṭha in the Ḍāhala country, who obtained the gift of three lakhs of villages from the Kalachuri king Yuvarājadēva.[6] Dr. D. C. Sircar has recently suggested that this Vāmaśambhu was the spiritual preceptor of the Kalachuri king Karṇa and flourished in the middle of the eleventh century A. D.[7] The description in the Malkāpuram inscription that even then (i.e., in the middle of the thirteenth century A. D.) the feet of Vāmaśambhu were worshipped by Kalachuri kings squares with the fact that the expression Vāmadēva-pād-ānudhyāta occurs in almost all records of the Kalachuris of Tripurī from Karṇa downwards. It is, however, doubtful how far the statements in the Malkāpuram inscription about the early Śaiva āchāryas of the Gōḷakī maṭha can be taken to be correct. The name of Sadbhāvaśambhu _____________________________________
[1] Above, Vol. XII, p. 216. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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