North Indian Inscriptions

KHAREPATAN PLATES OF RATTARAJA.

Aiyapadêva is said to have been kept on the throne by the aid of Anantadêva’s ancestor Aparâjita ; but as Aparâjita was reigning in Śaka-Saṁvat 919,¹ that Aiyapadêva must have lived about 200 years after the Aiyaparâja of the present inscription. Considering that our grant is dated in Śaka-Saṁvat 930= A.D. 1008-9, and that the succession of the ten chiefs in every case was from father to son, it has been rightly assumed that the founder of this family, [Sa]ṇaphulla, who first took possession of the country between the sea and the Sahyâdri range, lived in the second half of the 8th century A.D., and that, therefore, the king Kṛishṇa whose favour he enjoyed, can only have been the Râshṭrakûta Kṛishṇa I. who ruled in the third quarter of the same century.— Of the places mentioned, Valipattana, Chandrapura and Chêmûlya, the last has been identified with Chêṅval. (Chêul or Chaul), an ancient town on the coast, about thirty miles south of Bombay, of which a full account it given in the Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. XI. p. 269 ff. Here it will be sufficient to state that Chêmûlya is mentioned in the Khârêpâṭaṇ plates of Anantadêva,² as belonging to the Koṅkaṇ, group of 1400 [villages] which was held by the Northern Śîlâras ; and that, according to Mas’ûdî, who visited the town —called Saimûr by him— early in the 10th century, it was then under the government of a prince Djandja, i.e. Jhañjha, one of the Śîlâras of the Nothern Koṅkaṇ. These references show that the rulers of Chêmûlya, who in our inscription are reported to have been aided by Avasara [II.], most probably were Śîlâras of the northern branch of the family. Valipattana is shown by the passage, quoted on page 294 above, note 6, to have situated, like Chêmûlya, on the coast ; and the prominent manner in which it is mentioned in this inscription would seem to indicate that it was the capital at any rate of the earilier Silâras. The late Mr. Telang felt inclined to identify it with the Baltipatna of Ptolemy and Palaipatmai of the Periplûs ;³ but this, even supposing it to be correct, would not help us to identify the place. I myself cannot suggest any probable identification,⁴ nor can I identify Chandrapura, which also was situated near the sea, as is shown by line 57 of our inscription, and was apparently the principle town of the Chandra-maṇḍala, conquered by the chief Bhîma.

......The proper object of the inscription is stated in lines 33-61. Here the Maṇḍalika, the glorious Raṭṭarâja, who meditates on⁵ the Parambhaṭṭâraka Mahârâdhirâja, the glorious Satyâśrayadêva, informs the towns-men and country people and the chief ministers belonging to him, that, . . . . when the years from the time of the Śaka king were nine hundred and thirty, on the full-moon tithi of Jyaishṭha of the current year Kîlaka, he gave, as a reward of learning, to the learned preceptor, the holy Âtrêya,— a bee clinging to the lotuses, the feet of his preceptor, the holy Ambhôjaśaṁbhu, who had dispelled the darkness of ignorance by the sun of true knowledge, come to him through a series of preceptors of the Karkarôṇî branch of the famous Mattamayûra line (or school of ascetics) ; who by intense self-mortification had destroyed every worldly attachment ; who by the light of wisdom had revealed the way to heaven and final beatitude, and had secured fame in the three worlds by the acquisition of profound meditation,— for the purposes of worshipping with five-fold offerings the holy go d Avvêśvara⁶ and keeping his shrine in proper repair, and of providing
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......¹ See No. 37 above.
......² See Ind. Ant. Vol. IX. p. 35.
......³ See ibid. Vol. XIII. p. 327, and Vol. VIII. p. 145.
......⁴ According to the Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. XI. p. 345, Baltipatna (or Palaipatmai) would probably be the village of Pâlê, about two miles north-west of Mahâḍ in the Kôlâba district ; but this identification seems to be very doubtful.
......⁵ In the original the word anudhyâta is used by itself, instead of the ordinary pâd-ânudhyâta ; see Dr. Fleet’s Gupta Inscriptions, p. 17, note 2.
......⁶ If the reading in line 42 intended to be purassaraṁ (see page 300 below, note 11), the sense would be that Raṭṭarâja, after worshipping with five-fold offerings the holy god Avvêśvara, gave to Âtrêya, for the purposes of keeping (the god’s shrine) in proper repair, etc.