South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

DOMMARA-NANDYALA PLATES OF PUNYAKUMARA ;
10TH YEAR

were situated in this territory ; of the three villages, the first and the last are situated on the northern bank of the river Pennār while the second, identified with the village Paiḍēla, is on the southern bank of the Kundēru, a tributary of the Pennār. It is strikingly singular that neither of these rivers is mentioned in the record. The only other inscription which mentions Hiraṇyarāshṭra is, as far as I know, the Mālēpāḍu plates which state that the village Biripāru wherein the gift lands were situated, lay in Hiraṇyarāshṭra and was on the southern bank of Suprayōgā.^[1] Basing his conclusions on the probable identity of this village with Billupāḍu situated about 4 miles to the south of Pennār in the Atmakur taluk of the Nellore District, the late Rao Bahadur C. R. K. Charlu surmised that this territorial division must have included in it the northern and the western parts of the present Nellore District.^[2] Mr. M. S. Sarma has pointed out that the river Suprayōgā identified with Pennār must have formed a natural boundary between the Muṇḍarāshṭra on the north and the Hiraṇyarāshṭra on the south, as the villages Uruvupalle and Biripāru, the one situated in the former and the other in the latter of these territorial divisions, lay on the river’s northern and the southern banks respectively.^[3] But if the identification of the villages mentioned in the record under review is correct, it clearly points out that Hiraṇyarāshṭra extended even to the north of the river in fact more in this direction than towards it’s south. In his ‘ Notes on the Ancient Political Geography of South India ’, while attempting to fix the boundaries of Muṇḍarāshṭa, my colleague Mr. M. Venkataramayya, M.A., has identified the river Suprayōgā

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^[1] Above, Vol. XI, p. 339. An inscription of Rāshṭrakūṭa Kṛishṇa III (A.D. 939-968) from Pushpagiri in the Cuddapah District has been cited as furnishing yet another reference to this province (J. O. R., Vol., XII, p. 363). The inscription is in Kannaḍa and the relevant portion construed as referring to this territory reads as follows ; ― l. 15 int-ī dharmavan-ārā- 16 [nu]ṁ honna māḍi Muḷuki 17 nāḍanāḷdu mahārājyaṁ 18 geyvaru i dharmavanu kaṁ- 19 ḍisade naḍasidaḍe, etc. (S. I. I., Vol. IX, Part I, No. 69.)

On examining the impression of the epigraph, the words honna māḍi are unmistakably clear. As it is, the reading presents some syntactical difficulties which, however, can be got over by considering the words i dharmavanu repeated in l.18 as redundant, and taking the expression honna māḍi to mean ‘ having made fruitful(?)’. But the usage of this phrase in this sense seems to be very rare. If honna māḍi is to be considered a mistake for Honnavādi, we have certainly a territorial division of this name in this tract which could no doubt have formed part of the ancient Hiraṇyavarāshṭra inasmuch as Pushpagiri in the Cuddapah taluk is not far removed from that part of the Jammalamadugu taluk which we now definitely know formed part at least of this territorial division. But the evidence afforded by this record for establishing the identity sought between Hiraṇyarāshṭra and Honnavāḍi, taking the latter as a vernacular rendering of the former, is unsatisfactory not only on account of the uncertainty of the interpretation of the readings, as we have already observed, in the epigraph but also for the great disparity in date between the two records.
^[2] An. Rep. on S. I. Epigraphy. 1935-36, p. 56.
^[3] Journal of the Madras University, 1940, p. 140. The main reason adduced by Mr. Sarma for indentifying Suprayōgā with Pennār seems to be that Muṇḍarāshṭra of which the former forms the southern boundary corresponded with the Kōvūr taluk of the Nellore District and Pennār being the only prominent river flowing through this tract, it (Suprayōgā) could, ‘ without any hesitation, be safely identified with the Pennār ’. The evidence cited from the various Purāṇas in support of this identification presents certain difficulties in our accepting it. All the rivers according to these Purāṇas are said to have originated from the Sahyādri. Mr. N. Lakshminarayana Rao kindly drew my attention to the fact that the river Pennār takes its origin not in the Sahyādri which is usually identified with the Western Ghats, but in the small hill-range round the Nandi-hills in the Kolar District of the Mysore plateau. These bills are no doubt far removed and isolated from the Western Ghats and could hardly be considered as part of these Ghats though perhaps, in the days when these Purāṇas were composed, they were included in the Sahyādri or possibly the composers of the Parāṇas inadvertently made a mis-statement in saying that this river, viz., Suprayōgā, along with the other well-known rivers, took its origin in the Sahyādri.