North Indian Inscriptions

SPURIOUS SUDI PLATES.

were taken from some common source which remains to be discovered, it seems impossible to decide. But it adds some further details,¹ which are sufficiently instructive. According to the grants, the founder of the family was Koṅgaṇivarman. The chronicle mentions this persons ; with the date of A.D. 189-90 or 190-91 for his installation, at Skandapura. But it also gives the names of seven previous rulers of the same kingdom, of a different family ; and it tells us that they were of the Reḍḍi or Raṭṭa tribe, and belonged to the Sûryavaṁśa or Solar Race.² And, not only does it make this pointed statement, but, of these persons, five are distinctly to be identified with members of the Râshṭrakûṭa dynasty of Mâlkhêḍ, whose dates, far from lying before A.D. 189, fall between about A.D. 675 and 956. The names and relationship of the seven rulers, as given in the chronicle, are— Vîrarâja-Chakravartin, who was born in the city of Skandapura ; his son Gôvindarâya ; his son Kṛishṇarâya ; his son Kâlavallabharâya ; his son Gôvindarâya, with the date of A.D. 82-83 ; his son Chaturbhuja-Kannaradêva-Chakravartin ; and his son Tiru-Vikramadêva-Chakravartin, who is said to have been installed at Skandapura in A.D. 178-79, and to have been converted from Jainism to Śaivism by the celebrated Śaṁkarâchârya. And the second to the sixth of them are plainly— Gôvinda I. of the Râshṭrakûṭa dynasty (three generations before A.D. 754) ; his grandson Kṛishṇa I. ; the latter’s son Kalivallabha-Dhruva ; Dhruva’s son Gôvinda III. (A.D. 782-84 and 814-15) ; and either Gôvinda’s grandson Kannara-Kṛishṇa II. (A.D. 888 and 911-12), or the latteris great-grandson Kannara-Kṛishṇa III. (A.D. 940 and 956).³ The placing of those kings before the supposed founder of the Western Gaṅga family, and in the first and second centuries A. D., establishes at once the uttar worthlessness of the chronicle for any historical purposes, whether it is a composition of recent date, or whether it can pretend to any age.⁴

......It is hardly possible, after this detailed, that any genuine doubt can remain as to the spurious nature of the grants, and as to the complete futility, and worse, of placing reliance on either them or the chronicle for any historical or antiquarian purposes. But the question may very reasonably present itself,— What was the object of the invention of the genealogy that is exhibited in these squrious records ? And I think that even this can be satisfactorily answered. There are plain indications that, just about the period,— the last quarter of the ninth century A.D.,— that has been established above as the earliest possible one for the fabrication of the Merkara grant, all the reigning families of Southern India were beginning to look up their pedigrees and devise more or less fabulous genealogies. The Purâṇic genealogy of the Râshṭrakûṭas makes its first appearance in the Sâṅglî grant of A.D. 933.5 The Purâṇic genealogy of the Chalukyas presents itself first in the Korumelli grant of shortly
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......¹ See the extracts from Prof. Dowson’s (Jour. R. As. Soc., F. S., Vol. VIII. p. 1 ff.), which are attached to the first account of the Merkara grant (Ind. Ant. Vol. I. p. 360).
......² Even this detail is wrong ; for the Râshṭrakûṭas (Raṭṭas) attributed themselves to the Sômavaṁśa or Lunar Race.
......³ The wrong statements of relationship, by which each person is made the son of his predecessor, and the perversion of Kalivallabha into Kâlavallabha, are thoroughly typical features of such a documents.— It has been suggested (Ind. Ant. Vol. XIV. p. 124) that the first Gôvindarâya represents Gôvinda II., son Kṛishṇa I. ; and that the proper order of these two names has been transposed. But I see no reason for adopting this suggestion. The composer of the chronicle evidently got hold of some Râshṭrakûṭa record which, as several of them do, started the genealogy with Gôvinḍa I., and omitted Gôvinda II., who did not reign.—Chaturbhuja- Kannaradêva-Chakravartin may be, as the previously been assumed, Kannara-Kṛishṇa II. But, for the reasons given above in connection with the mention of a king Akâlavarsha in the Merkara grant. I think that he is more probably Kannara-Kṛishṇa III.
......⁴ Another document of the same kind (except that is known to be of a absolutely modern date), which has been similarly used for the creation of imaginary history about Mysore, is the Râjâvalî-kathe, with its wonderful account, in connection with Śravaṇa-Beḷgoḷa, of the Śruta-Kêvalin Bhadrabâhu and a supposittious grandson, named Chandragupta, of Aśôka, the grandson of Chandragupta of Pâṭaliputra (see Ind. Ant. Vol. XXI. p. 157).
......⁵ Ind. Ant. Vol. XII. p. 247.