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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
fame of the Māṭhara family, the ornament of his own family and the lord of the entire Kaliṅga
country. Neither his father Śaktivarman nor his grandfather Śaṅkaravarman is endowed with
the title Mahārāja ; but that Śaktivarman certainly and Śaṅkaravaman probably were ruling
monarchs is indicated by an epithet saying that Śaktivarman (not called a Mahārāja) ruled the
land lying between the rivers Kṛishṇavēnnā (Kṛishṇā) and Mahānadī as if the inhabitants of that
region were his own offsprings. Śaktivarman moreover is none other than the ruler of that name
who issued the Rāgōlu plates in the thirteenth year of his reign. His epithet referred to above
is on a par with Prabhañjavarman’s claim to have been the lord of the entire Kaliṅga country. In
his own record, Śaktivarman also is described as the lord of Kaliṅga. The implication of Śaktivarman’s epithet in the record under review is that Kaliṅga lay on the coast of the Bay of Bengal
between the lower courses of the Kṛishṇā and Mahānadī rivers. As pointed out by me elsewhere,[1]
such claims do not point to the actual position of the rulers in question but to the political ideal
of the period which may not have been always realised in practice. It has also been pointed out
that many of the Kaliṅga kings of the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. called themselves Kaliṅgādhipati and a few even sakala-Kaliṅg-ādhipati (as in the case of Mahārāja Prabhañjanavarman
in our record) and that the latter title at least points to the rule of most of the Kaliṅgādhipatis
only over parts of the Kaliṅga country. This fact is clearly borne out by the known facts of history. We know that the Māṭharas and their rivals holding sway over Central and Southern Kaliṅga
had little to do with the Puri-Cuttack region of Northern Kaliṅga It may also be noticed that
not the Kṛishṇā but the Gōdāvarī was usually regarded as the southern boundary of Kaliṅga. The
above Kaliṅgādhipatis had evidently not much to do with the land between the Kṛishṇā and the
Gōdāvarī where the Śālaṅkāyanas and Vishṇukuṇḍins were ruling in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D.
The king’s order regarding the grant of a piece of land was addressed to the cultivators assembled at the locality called Astihōṇa-Rāmagrāma. He made the grant of a locality called Niṅgōṇḍi
which either abutted on or formed a part of Astihōṇa-Rāmagrāma and was bounded by Rukmapati
on the north, Vyāghraprastara together with a mole-hill by a Śālmalī tree on the west and the sea
(Bay of Bengal) on the south. The eastern boundary is not mentioned unless it is believed that
the word pūrvēṇa is inadvertently omitted before the reference to the Śālmalī tree and the
mole-hill mentioned in connection with the western boundary. The gift land was thus situated
on the shore of the Bay of Bengal. The locality called Niṅgōṇḍi was made a permanent
agrahāra by the king and granted in favour of some Brāhmaṇas belonging to different gōtras and
charaṇas. Unfortunately in several other charters[2] of this kind, the names of the donees are
not mentioned in the document. The cultivators are advised to attend on the donees according
to the established custom and to offer them regularly the mēya (share of the produce) and hiraṇya
(tax in cash). Future rulers are then requested to protect the grant and such protection of grants
made by previous rulers is said to be the sva-dharma of kings. Three of the usual benedictory and
imprecatory verses are next quoted as Vyāsa-gīta-ślōkāḥ. In line 15 reference is made to the annual
rent fixed at two hundred paṇas probably of cowries. We know that 80 cowries made one paṇa.
Thus 200 paṇas were equal to 16,000 cowries. This amount was apparently payable by the donees
to the king every year in advance (cf. the word agra used in this connection) inspite of the fact
that Niṅgōṇḍi was evidently given away free to the Brāhmaṇas as an agrahāra. Such agrahāras
were usually revenue-free gifts. But we have many records among the early epigraphs of Orissa,
which record gifts of gift-deeds entitled kara-śāsanas and specify the annual rent (usually much
less than what the normal rent of the lands in question would be) payable by the donees to the
king, I have elsewhere[3] discussed the nature of a large number of such documents,
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[1] New History of the Indian People, Vol. VI, p. 81.
[2] Cf. above Vol. XXVII, p. 35 (text, lines 7-8).
[3] See Itihāsa (Bengali), Calcutta, Vol. II (B. S. 1358) pp.115-20 ; JRAS, 1952 pp. 4-10.
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