North Indian Inscriptions

SPURIOUS SUDI PLATES.

be placed in the eighth or ninth century, A.D.,— say, pending more precise discoveries, somewhere in the period A.D. 750 to 850. His existence and period are proved, not by the spurious grants, but by stone inscriptions at Taḷakâd, Sivâra, and Sivarpaṭṇa,— unquestionably genuine, but unfortunately not dated,— of which Mr. Rice sent me photographs with the object of inducing my admission, which I give without hesitation, of the genuine existence of at any rate one of the persons named in the spurious records. The Taḷakâḍ inscription, which speaks of Śrîpurusha-Muttarasa as the Mahârâja Pṛithuvî-Koṅgaṇi-Muttarasa-Śrîpurusha, and describes him as reigning as paramount sovereign, would have been, in itself, quite sufficient to establish him as a historical personage. And, being engraved in remarkably fine characters which are attributable to any period about A.D. 800,¹ it makes it quite possible that the fabricator of the Hosûr and Nâgamaṅgala grants had available, or hit off, true dates for him. But it contains no hint of the genealogy that is given in the copper-plate grants ; nor do the others ; and so, of course, these records do not substantiate either that genealogy, or any of the supposed facts that are stated in the course of it. There is, indeed, one other name, which may perhaps be placed before that of Śrîpurusha-Muttarasa : for, a genuine but undated stone inscription at Dêbûr in the Nañjangûḍ tâlukâ, Mysore, engraved in well-formed characters of just about the same period, mentions a Śivamâra, and, without connecting any title with his name, describes him, also, as reigning as paramount sovereign ;² and the existence of a king named Śivamâra, either just before or just after Śrîpurusha-Muttarasa, and referable to the same lineage with him, is, therefore, also proved. But this record, again, contains no genealogical information ; and so it does not help us to decide whether this Śivamâra is the person who according to the Sûḍi grant³ was the father, and according to the Hosûr and Nâgamaṅgala grants was the grandfather, of Śripurusha-Muttarasa, or whether he is the person whom the Sûḍi grant represents as a son of Śripurusha-Muttarasa.⁴ Thus, the existence of one at least, and perhaps two, of the persons named in the spurious characters purporting to belong to the earlier period, and referable approximately to the period that is made out for one of them by those charters, is now established. And, taking the later period as represented by the spurious Sûḍi grant, a genuine but undated stone inscription from Doḍḍahuṇḍi in Mysore, now in the Bangalore Museum,⁵ establishes the existence, in just about the same period, but probably

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......¹ It includes the old form of the b ; as also dose one of the Sivarpaṭṇa records. I do not find the later form of the kh or the b in any of the records in question, four in number.— I would make here a remark on an incidental point of some importance. The photographs suffice to shew the general standard of these records well enough. But they do not represent the originals faithfully and intelligibly ; the reason being that, for photography, the letters were filled in, either with paint or with whitewash, by hand. This practice cannot be too strongly condemned ; it distorts the characters, introduces mistakes, and frequently renders it quite impossible to decide what the originals really contain. The ancient records, when studied from reproductions, can be properly appreciated and understood only from reproductions which are purely mechanical.
......² Here I write on the authority of an ink-impression, which Mr. Rice kindly sent for my inspection. The impression is not very clear ; but the record appears not to include the letters kh and b in either form.
......³ See the Table on page 177 below.
......⁴ The name Śivamâra occurs also in one of the Sivarpaṭṇa inscriptions of Śrîpurusha-Muttarsa. But here, again, there is nothing to help us to decide the question of identity.— Mr. Rice has also sent me photographs of a copper-plate charter which purports to have been issued by the Śivamâra who is represented as either the father or the grandfather of Śrîpurusha-Muttarsa. It style him the Mahârâja Śivamâra-Pṛrithivi-Koṅgaṇi. And it purports to have been issued in the month Jyêshṭha (May-June), falling in A.D. 713, of the thirty-fourth year of his reign, Śaka-Saṁvat 635 expired. But this, again, is a spurious record. Like some of the other records, it purports to have been written by Viśvakarman ; and it seems, as a matter of fact, to have been written by the very person who wrote the Nâgamaṅgala record. And, as regards the palæographic test of the two specially tell-tale characters, though the old form of the b is used throughout, the later form of the kh is used all through, expect in one solitary instance.
......⁵ I write here on the authority of a photograph which Dr. Hultzsch kindly sent me. This record contains the old form of the kh ; the letter b does not appear in it all. As regards general features, the characters seem slightly later than those of the genuine records of Śrîpurusha-Muttarasa and Śivamâra.