South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

PARBATIYA PLATES OF VANAMALAVARMADEVA

Sālastambha, the twentyfirst king of whose line was Tyāgasiṁha ; this king having died childless, the subjects, preferring a scion of the Nāraka or Bhauma dynasty, made Brahmapāla their king. Of these twentyone rulers of the Mlēchchha house of Sālastambha, mentioned in verse 7 of our record (cf. the expression tasty=ānvayē indicating the relation between Vajradatta and Sālambha) as a branch of the Nāraka or Bhauma dynasty, we have inscriptions of three kings only, viz., (1) Harjara or Harjaravarman to whom belong the Hayungthal plate^[1] and the Tezpur rock inscription^[2] ; (2) Harjaravarman’s son Vanamāla or Vanamālavarman who issued the Tezpur plates^[3] and the charter under discussion ; and (3) Vanamālavarman’s grandson Balavarman who issued the Nowgong plates referred to above. Of the four published records of the family, Harjaravarman’s inscriptions, one (the Hayungthal epigraph) of which is fragmentary as only one of the plates has so far been found, are both in a miserable state of preservation. The original of the Tezpur inscription of Vanamālavarman is now lost and its transcript, published as early as 1840 in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, is palpably full of mistakes of all sorts. The late Mr. P. N. Bhattacharya made an attempt to emend the faulty transcript of the record with the help of imagination ; but the result could hardly be satisfactory. The only published record of the family, reliable from the historians’ point of view, is thus the Nowgong plates of Balavarman, although this epigraph also suffers from a few damaged letters. Under the circumstances, the Parbatiyā plates of Vanamālavarman under publication remove a number of defects and doubts in the history of the Mlēchchha or Sālastambha family of Prāgjyōtisha.

In the first place, from the published wrong text of verses 7-9 of the lost Tezpur plates of Vanamālavarman, it was so long believed that king Prālambha was the father of Harjaravarman. The clear reading of those verses in our record shows that Prālambha was a wrong reading for Sālambha and that Harjaravarman’s father was not Sālambha but the latter’s brother (apparently younger brother) named Arathi. It further shows that the reading of the name Āratha in verse 9 is wrong. The theory about the existence in this dynasty of a prince named Āratha, regarded as the son of Arathi who is mentioned in the passage chakr-ārathī (Chakra and Arathi) in line 9 of the indistinct Hayungthal plate of Harjaravarman, is thus entirely imaginary.^[4] Secondly, it was so long believed, on the strength of the wrong reading of verse 5, that it was Bhagadatta who is said to have received the lordship of the territory called Uparipattana. It is, however, clear beyond doubt form our record that, while Bhagadatta obtained the kingdom of Prāgjyōtisha, his brother Vajradatta secured lordship over Uparipattana through the grace of Īśvara whom he had propitiated.^[5] Thirdly, the name of

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^[1] Ibid., pp. 48-51.
^[2] Ibid., p. 187.
^[3] Ibid., pp. 58-65 ; JASB, Vol. IX, 1840, pp. 766-67.
^[4] Kāmarūpa-śāsan-āvalī, introduction, p. 20. The reading and interpretation of verse 8 of the Hayungthal plate are not beyond doubt. According to Bhattacharya (op. cit., pp. 48-49, 51-52), Harshavarman, who seems to be placed immediately before Sālambha in our record (cf. śrī-Harsh-āntairº in verse 8), was followed on the throne by his son Balavarman ; then in the family were born the princes Chakra and Arathi, and the son of the latter, whose name is not traced in the record but is suggested to be Āratha (on the basis of the wrong reading of verse 9 of Vanamāla’s lost plates) became king ; Jīvadēvī, mentioned in the following verses 9-10 and described as the mother of Harjara in verse 11, was the wife of Āratha’s successor Prālambha (sic. Sālambha). We now know that Sālambha was succeeded by his younger brother Arathi, who was the husband of Jīvadēvī and the father of Harjaravarman. It seems therefore that the second half of verse 8 of the Hayungthal inscription has to be son interpreted as to indicate that the throne passed to the two brothers named Chakra and Arathi and that the younger of the two brothers was the husband of Jīvadēvī. If this has to be accepted, then it has possibly to be suggested that Chakra was another name of Sālambha and that the rule of Balavarman intervening between that of Harshavarman and Sālambha was ignored in Vanamāla’s records because that king was succeeded by Chakra alias Sālambha after a very short rule. 5 Cf. Journ. Assam Res. Soc., Vol. VII, p. 88.