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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA 3 varṇṇa-Dhanū(nuḥ)-kṛishṇa-pratipadi Bhaumavārē Sa(Śa)[mbhō*]ś=charaṇ-āravi-[1] The date of the inscription is therefore not Śaka 1145 as suggested by Chakravarti, but really Śaka 1140. The astronomical details of the date (Dhanus-badi 1, Tuesday) tally regularly with the 4th December 1218 A.D., which is probably associated in the epigraph with the 10th Aṅka or 8th regnal year of the Gaṅga king Anaṅkabhīmadēva (Anaṅgabhīma III). Inscription No. 1 begins with the symbol for siddham which is followed by the expressions svasti iti. Then follows the date (Aṅka 23 or regnal year 19, Makara or Māgha-badi 3, Thursday) in the regnal reckoning of Rāutta (i.e. a feudatory) Bhīmadēva (Anaṅgabhīma III). There are three epithets describing the king, of which the first one is of considerable interest. It says that the Gaṅga monarch, described as a subordinate ruler, was the son of Purushōttama (i.e. the god Purushōttama-Jagannātha of Purī). We have seen elsewhere[2] how the Gaṅga king Anaṅgabhīma III dedicated his kingdom in favour of the said deity and considered himself a Rāuta or Rāutta (i.e. feudatory) of the latter and how his successors, as they regarded themselves subordinates to the god Purushōttama-Jagannātha, did not enjoy formal coronation at the time of their accession. In this context, the claim of Anaṅgabhīma III to have been the son of the god in the present record (as well as in the other one to the discussed below) assumes special importance. The claim to be the god’s son was undoubtedly meant to be the same as that preferring to be the god’s feudatory. The second epithet of the Gaṅga king in the inscription under review represents him as the lord of the whole earth as far as the four oceans. As we have elsewhere[3] shown, this is a conventional claim preferred by the imperial rulers of ancient and medieval India.. The third epithet of the king seems to say that he was surrounded by a large number of learned men.
The inscription records the grant of a perpetual lamp in favour of the god Kīrttivāsa (Kṛittivāsa or Śiva worshipped in the Liṅgarāja temple) and, for making provision for the same, a piece of land which was called Vāṅkilāṇḍā, measured 2¼ Vāṭis (about 45 acres according to modern calculation) and was situated in the southern part of the village called Uchisama-grāma. The grant was made by the Sēnāpati (i.e. general, apparently of the Gaṅga king) Ira (or possibly Īśvara) who belonged to the Kāśyapa gōtra and was the son of Surāṇḍi and grandson of Chaṇḍēśvara. There is an endorsement at the end of the inscription in line 11, which seems to record the grant of another piece of land measuring 6 Māṇas (i.e. 3/10 Vāṭi), situated in a locality called Balabhadrapura. Inspite of the loss of the beginning of no less than ten lines of writing in Inscription No. 2, it s clear that its first three lines offer the same text as lines 1-3 of Inscription No. 1. Lines 4-5 of Inscription No. 2 quote the date of the record. As has been pointed out above, this date cannot be determined owing to the fragmentary state of the passages in question. The inscription records _________________________________________________
[1] The inscription has some interest to the student of the social history of medieval Bengal. The remaining
lines of the epigraph read as follows :
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