North Indian Inscriptions

RECORDS OF THE SOMAVAMSI KINGS OF KATAK.

......Of the latter, the first that was brought to notice is B., one of the set of three charters issued by Mahâ-Bhavagupta I. in his thirty-first year. It was edited in 1876, in the Ind. Ant. Vol. V. p. 55 ff., by Babu Rangalala Banerjea, who propounded the view─ (1) that Mahâ-Bhavagupta I. belonged to the dynasty of “the great Guptas” meaning, apparently, the Early Guptas, or to some branch of it established in the Kaliṅga country ; (2) that E., which record, though not then published, had been examined by him, proves that a king named Yayâti reigned in Orissa when Mahâ-Śivagupta,¹ the son of Mahâ-Bhavagupta I., was the king of the three Kaliṅgas ; (3) that the kings of Orissa were feudatories of the Guptas, and made all their grants in the names of their paramount masters ; (4) that Yayâti is to be identified with a certain Yayâti-Kêsari, who, according to a (supposed) historical account of Orissa, compiled by Mr. Andrew Stirling from two local vaṁśâvalis or genealogical lists of kings and from the Râjacharitra chapter of the Mâdlâ-Pâñji or archives preserved in the temple of Jagannâtha at Purî, and published in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. XV. (1825), pp. 254 to 305, was the founder of the Kêsari dynasty of Orissa, and reigned from A.D. 473 to 520 ;² and (5) that the period of Mahâ-Śivagupta, and of the record itself, is determined by this identification.³

......Next there was brought to notice E., the charter issued by Mahâ-Śivagupta in the ninth year of Yayâti, i.e, in his own ninth year, which was edited by the same gentleman in 1877, in the Jour. Beng. As. Soc. Vol XLVI. Part I. p. 149 ff. On this occasion, he again treated Mahâ-Śivagupta and Yayâti as distinct personages ; and, in fact, he pointedly emphasised the supposed difference of personality. He repeated the view that the Kêsaris of Orissa acknowleged the Guptas as the paramount power,─ i.e. that Yayâti was a feudatory of Mahâ-Śivagupta,─ and that the grant was made by Yayâti in the name of his supreme sovereign. He again accepted the period of A. D. 474 to 526⁴ for Yayâti. And, taking Janamêjaya to be simply an “ancestor” of Yayâti,─ not his father ; though this is the relationship which is distinctly stated in the record, and which was acknowledged by the Babu himself in his translation of it,─ he identified Janamêjaya with a person of the same name who, according to tradition, founded the city of Kaṭak-Chaudwâr ;⁵ and he placed him seven generations before Yayâti, and allotted him to the earlier part of the first century A. D.

......In the same year, and in the same volume, p. 175 ff., A., another of the charters issued by Mahâ-Bhavagupta I., and dated in the sixth year of Janamêjaya, i.e. in his own sixth
__________________________________________________________________________________________

......¹ Called simply ‘Śivagupta’ by the Babu, who did not notice the point that the father of Mahâ-Bhavagupta I. was Śivagupta, and his son was Mahâ-Śivagupta. So also, expect in the translation, he called Mahâ-Bhavagupta I. simply ‘Bhavagupta.’
......² According to Mr. Stirling, he commenced to reign in A.D. 473 after the end of Śaka-Saṁvat 396 (loc. cit. p. 264), and died A. D. 520 (p. 266).─ Since Mr. Stirling’s time, the records of the temple of Jagannâtha have been twice investigated (see Sir William Hunter’s Orissa, edition of 1872, Vol. I. pp. 198, 199, and notes 43, 44); in 1868 by Dr. Rajendralala Mitra. whose arrangements for publication, however, were prevented by the priests from being carried out ; and at an earlier date by Bhabani Charan Bandopadhyaya, who published his results in a Bengâlî work entitled Purushôttamachadrikâ. Sir William Hunter says that this account “is fuller “and more carefully done than Stirling’s excellent sketch ;” he is “inclined to believe that this all the really historical “matter has now been extracted ;” and he has given the list of kings and dates, thus made out, from B.C. 3101 to A.D. 1871, with the leading features of the statements made in connection with them, in his Orissa, Vol. II. Appendix VII. pp. 183 to 191. This account agrees with Mr. Stirling’s account, in representing Yayâti-Kêsari as the founder of the Kêsari dynasty. The period that it gives for him, however, is A.D. 474 to 526,─ differing slightly from the period arrived at by Mr. Stirling ; and there are differences in some of the other dates also.
......³ He recognised, indeed, on palæographic grounds, that the records “cannot be very ancient” (loc. cit. p. 60). But he said distinctly that he supposed Mahâ-Śivagupta “to have been a contemporary of Yayâti-Kêsari, who reigned between the years 474 and 526 A.D.” (for these dates, see the end if the preceding note).
......⁴ See the preceding two notes.
......⁵ i.e. “the four-gated Kaṭak.” it would appear that the original city was Chandwâr or Chaudwârâ, on the north bank of the Mahânadî ; and that the present town Kaṭak, vulgo ‘Cuttack,’ on the south bank, is of later origin.