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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA PURI PLATE OF KULASTAMBHA (1 Plate) D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND Sometime before February 1891, the late Mr. Man Mahan Chakravarti secured two copper-plate inscriptions, on temporary loan for examination and publication, from the Rāghavadāsa Maṭha at Puri, Orissa. The results of his study of the inscriptions were published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LXIV, Part I, 1895, pp. 123-27. Both the charters were issued by a king named Kulastambha belonging to the Śulkī family which Chakravarti identified with the Eastern Chālukya dynasty. He even suggested the identification of the issuer of the charters in question with the Eastern Chālukya monarch Guṇaka-Vijayāditya III who began to rule about the middle of the ninth century and alternatively with the Chālukya-Chōḷa king Kulōttuṅga I who ruled in the latter half of the eleventh century A.C. and the first quarter of the twelfth, although the plates were assigned by him on palaeographical grounds to the tenth century. The identification seems to have been suggested to him by the occurrence of the name of Kaliṅga in his transcripts of the two inscriptions. Chakravarti further observed, “ The text purports to be in Sanskrit, but has been badly transcribed…The context is not therefore clear everywhere. I have given a verbatim rendering without attempting revision ”. As the two “ inscriptions generally agree till we come to the grant itself ”, Chakravarti transcribed only one of the two grants (marked by him as A) but quoted the text of six lines from the other charter (marked by him as B), which give details of the grant recorded in the latter. According to him the legend on the seal of A reads śrīmāṁ Kulastambhadēva and that on the seal of B śrīmāṁ Ralastambhadēva. He also believed that both the grants mention Kulastambha’s son or governor (kōdālō), named Kachchhadēva, and that while A records the grant of the village of Kāṅkanira in the Ulō-khaṇḍa subdivision in favour of the Brāhmaṇa Madhusūdana, son of Vēlu, B records the grant of the village of Pajāra in the same sub-division in favour of the Brāhmaṇa Vēluka or Vēlu.
Unfortunately the facsimiles of the inscriptions were not published along with Chakravarti’s paper and it was impossible for scholars to verify the correctness of his transcripts and interpretations of the two Puri plates of Kulastambha. But his identification of the Śulkī family with the _________________________________________________
[1] This letter is completely damaged on the stone. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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