South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

Prastara-vāṭaka were ordered to attend on the done according to the established custom. The record next quotes seven of the usual imprecatory and benedictory verses. The above is followed by the statement that the charter was written by Sadgāmaka with the cognisance of Rāhasika Subandhu. The official designation rāhasika is no doubt the same as rahasyādhikṛita of the Hirahadagalli plates^[1] of Pallava Śivaskandavarman. Subandhu was apparently the privy-councillor of Mahārāja Tushṭikāra.

At the end of the above charter, two expressions were later added. The intended reading of these appears to be śūnya-kshētram prastara-kshētra-pramukham. It purports to include a piece of land, which was fallow and mainly rocky, in the agrahāra of Prastara-vāṭaka granted by Mahārāja Tushṭikāra in favour of the Brāhmaṇa, Ārya-Drōṇaśarman. But whether it was a genuine endorsement made by the royal authority sometime after the original grant had been made is difficult to determine. The errors that are noticed in the expressions may suggest that this addition was made, not long after the date of the grant, by the done or his successors.

A more important endorsement is found engraved on the outer side of the first plate. It is interesting to note that the incision of the same was at first begun on the outer side of the third plate but was given up after engraving only one line, the letters of the line being erased. It may be supposed that the intention was to incise the endorsement on the outer side of the first plate in an earlier script so that the original document might be regarded as its continuation engraved at a later date. The facts that it was engraved at the beginning of the main document in the box-headed script, perhaps to give it an earlier look, and that it exhibits numerous errors in both drafting and engraving may suggest that the endorsement is a forgery. Since, however, the box-headed alphabet was used in the inscriptions of the Pāṇḍuvaṁśīs of South Kosala (i.e. the Sambalpur-Bilaspur-Raipur region) in the sixth and seventh centuries, it seems better to suggest that the person responsible for the forgery had some reason to associate that alphabet with the donor of the grant recorded in the endorsement. It is thus possible to think that the endorsement was intended to be written in the box-headed script just to give it a special look but not an earlier one.

The endorsement purports to state that it was issued from Parvatadvāraka by the mother of a king who was devoted to the goddess Stambhēśvarī and to record the grant of a piece of land which was under the possession of certain persons as a permanent holding in favour of a Brāhmaṇa of the Kāśyapa gōtra, named Drōṇasvāmin. There is little doubt that this Drōṇasvāmin is no other than Drōṇaśarma donee of Tushṭikāra’s character discussed above. The fact that the original grant was issued from Tarabhramaraka but was endorsed at Parvatadvāraka may be taken to suggest that the grant recorded in the latter was sought to be attributed to the ruler of a territory adjacent to Tushṭikāra’s kingdom. But the reference to the goddess Stambhēśvarī both in the original grant as well as the endorsement may suggest that the latter was purported to be issued in favour of the donee of Tushṭikāra’s grant by another member of that king’s family whose tutelary deity was Stambhēśvarī. The representation of the queen-mother as the donor of the grant may indicate that the king was a minor and that his mother was running the administration as regent. It is tempting to suggest that the young king mentioned in the endorsement was the minor son of Tushṭikāra himself. In that case we have to assume that Parvatadvāraka was a secondary capital of Tushṭikāra’s kingdom. The use of the box-headed alphabet in this part of the record may then be explained by the suggestion that it was popular in the dominions of the queen-mother’s father. Unfortunately, owing to the careless engraving of the endorsement, the names of the king and the queen-mother cannot be satisfactorily made out. The name of the latter, given in the third case-ending, seems to read Kasthubhasayya which may

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^[1] Above, Vol. I, p. 7 ; Select Inscriptions, p. 441 ; of also the Rithapur grant (above, Vol. XIX, pp. 100 ff.) and, Kesaribeda plates (ibid., Vol. XXVIII, pp. 16-17).