South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

The object of the records is to register a gift of (land as) pannasa at Marralūru by Aṇṇārāpuli-Vāṁbuḷu to Īśvara, a Brāhmaṇa (pāra) of Vēṁgi (and a resident) of Tārumunri, during the first regnal year of Vikramāditya-Satyāśraya-Pṛithivīvallabha when Pōrmukharāma was governing the territory as far as the limits of the Penna on behalf of the Bāṇa king.

The record is important on several counts. It is the earliest known among the lithic records of Vikramāditya II and perhaps the only one so far known of this king in the Telugu country.^[1] The fact that it gives the regnal year of the king marks it out from his other lithic records which omit this detail. These apart, the mention of Pōrmukharāma raises some interesting issues. Who could this Pōrmukharāma be ? The Rāmēśvaram pillar inscription^[2] and the copper-plate grants^[3] (the Mālēpāḍu plates and the Dommara-Nandyāla plates) of the Telugu-Chōḷa chief Puṇyakumāra attribute this epithet to him. The latter, viz., the copper-plate grants, in delineating the genealogy of this chief, mention his father, Mahēndravarman as the one who acquired the title Chōḷa-Mahārāja and describe him as the lord of the Pāṇḍya, Chōḷa and Kēraḷa (countries). Besides, he bore the epithets Muditaśilākshara and Navarāma, the first in imitation of the Pallava birudas and the other similar to Pōrmukharāma which was one of the epithets borne by his son Puṇyakumāra. From the account given of them in the copper-plate grants and stone inscriptions, Puṇyakumāra’s predecessors appear to have been powerful chiefs who wielded great authority. Perhaps as vassals of the Pallavas, they adopted names and epithets such as Siṁhavishṇu, Mahēndravarman, Guṇamudita, Madamudita, etc., similar to those of their overlords. Among them Erikal-Muturāju Puṇyakumāra, an early member of this family who was ruling over Rēnāḍu and who appears to have been a contemporary of Chāḷukya Vikramāditya I, in addition to adopting certain epithets in imitation of the Pallava titles, took fancy also to have his inscription engraved in the style of those of the Pallava sovereigns.^[4] His later namesake Pōrmukharāma Puṇyakumāra bore the epithets Mārdavachitta and Madanavilāsa, again in imitation of the Pallava titles. Thus from the time of

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^[1] The Annavaram-Agrahāram inscription in the Darsi Division of the Nellore District may also ascribed to this king on account of its more developed script, but the inscription is not dated ; see An. Rep. on South Indian Epigraphy, 1933-34, part II, plate opp. page 29.
^[2] Above, Vol. XXVII, p. 234.
^[3] Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 342 ; Vol. XXVII, p. 267.
^[4] Above, Vol. XXVII, p. 233, Inscription F in plate opp. p. 229. According to Mr. M. Venkataramayya, however, this Puṇyakumāra and his namesake of the copper-plate charaters and lithic records are one and the same (ibid. pp. 220 f.). If palaeography permits the dating of a record to a period fairly within narrow limits of say, a quarter of a century, and historical considerations do not militate against such a dating, then it is difficult to assign to the Rāmēśvaram pillar inscription and the allied records (the copper-plate charters) the same date as the assigned to the Tippalūru pillar inscription. The palaeography of the latter is certainly far more archaic than that of the other records. Among the records of these chiefs published in this journal, the Kalamaḷḷa, Erraguḍipāḍu, Veldurti and the Tippalūru epigraphs (op. cit., Inscriptions A, B, E and F) have been assigned to different periods ranging from the last quarter of the 6th century to the first half of the 7th century A. C. mainly on palaeographical considerations. Allowing a fair margin for the slight variations in the style of the script due to the various factors involved in the process of engraving on stone, it may be observed by a careful comparison of their palaeography, especially of the test letters j, ḍ, b and r that all these records may be assigned more or less to the same period within a range of about 25 years, the difference in palaeography between the earliest and the latest of them being just as much as that between the Turimeḷḷa and the Dimmaguḍi inscriptions of Vikramāditya I (see, above, Vol. XXIX, p. 163, plate). It appears to me that the Kalamaḷḷa inscription of Erikal-Muturāju Dhanañjaya may not be far removed in point of time from that of the Tippalūru pillar inscription of Erikal-Muturāju Puṇyakumāra. The provenance, the period and the title Erikal-Muturāju assumed by Dhanañjaya and Puṇyakumära in these two records being identical, can it be that the two chiefs too were one and the same ? Dhanañjaya was, according to the copper-plate grants, succeeded by his son Mahēndravarman who acquired the title of Chōḷa-Mahārāja. The Uruṭūru and the Indukūru records (op. cit., pp. 228 ff., inscriptions C and D) may well have belonged to this chief. That neither the copper-plate charters nor any of the lithic records of this family attribute the surname Puṇyakumāra to Dhanañjaya is indeed inexplicable.