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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
engaged in subduing Bhōja.[1] That this Paśchimarāya Bhōja was the Śilāhāra prince Bhōja II is
well established.[2] The date when Bhōja II was defeated and the Śilāhāra kingdom subjugated
was approximately fixed by Fleet as lying some time before 1217-18 A.C. on the evidence of a record
of Siṅghaṇa found at Kolhapur dated in this year.[3] He notices another inscription of Siṅghaṇa
of date 1213 A.C. at Khedrapur in Kolhapur territory.[4] Although it lies in the territory of the
Śilāhāra chief, Fleet was apparently not prepared to presume that Bhōja was defeated
before this date since the record does not mention the event. However, the date of the event can
now be pushed back by at least two years from 1217-18 A.C. as the recently found Gōraṇṭla
epigraph of January 25, 1216 A.C., noticed above, refers to the victory over Paśchimarāya-Bhōjadēva, i.e., Bhōja II, as the achievement of Lakshmīdēva-Daṇḍanāyaka, Siṅghaṇa’s general.
Siṅghaṇa’s occupation of the region south of the Tuṅghabhadrā, particularly the area now
comprising the districts of Anantapur, Bellary, Kurnool and Cuddapah, to which our Pushpagiri
record and other inscriptions cited above bear testimony, does not seem to have been firmly established nor did it last long. It is well known that the Hoysaḷas continued to be masters of their
own dominions south of the Tuṅgabhadrā and often beat back the Yādava invaders. Besides the
Hoysaḷas, there was another powerful opponent of the Yādavas, viz., the Telugu-Chōḍa prince,
Tikka I of Nellore, who is known from inscriptional and literary records to have defeated the
Yādavas. Of Tikka’s reign a large number of inscriptions have been found. They show that he
ruled approximately from 1208 to 1239 A.C. Two of them at Kāñchī, dated Śaka 1153 (1231
A.D.)[5] and Śaka 1156 (1234 A.C.)[6] state that he was the cataclysmic fire to the ocean, viz.,
Kalyāṇapuri, that he destroyed the pride of the Sēvuṇas and inflicted ignominious punishments on
them. The same exploit against the Sēvuṇas seems to be alluded to in the Telugu Daśakumāracharitramu, a poetical work of the same period written by a pupil of Tikkana-Sōmayājin, named
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[1] It is interesting to note that there is still another who assumed the same biruda referring to the victory over
Bhōja. He is Śārṅgapāṇidēva who describes himself as the son of Yādava Siṅghaṇa and assumes all the imperial
titles of the Yādava kings in an inscription of his at Pānuṅgal in the Hyderabad State (Hyd. Arch. Series, No. 13,
ins. no. 34). The record is dated Śaka 1189, Prabhava, i.e., 1267 A.C. In this epigraph he is credited with nearly
all the victories which are found attributed to Siṅghaṇa in the Purushōttamapuri plates of Rāmachandra (above,
Vol. XXV, pp. 202 and 209 : v. 4) and in the Tiliwaḷḷi stone inscription of Siṅghaṇa (No. 257 of the An. Rep. on
I.E., for the year 1945-6 : Kannaḍa Sāhitya Parishat Patrike, Vol. 28, pp. 1-26). In fact the Pānuṅgal record gives
to Sārṅgapāṇidēva the same string of birudas including the imperial titles of Siṅghaṇa as found in the Tiliwaḷḷi
inscription. Possibly he just inherited the titles having had no part in the conquests of Siṅghaṇa. The record
further describes him as administering the sthala of Pānuṅgallu in the reign of king Manuma-Rudradēva of the Kākatīya dynasty. That a person of so high an extraction should be holding such a small status is significant.
A similarly worded praśasti occurs in a fragmentary stone inscription at Uddari in the Sorab taluk of the Shimoga
District, Mysore, which opens with the date Śaka 1198 but the name of the chief to whom the epithets apply is lost
in the missing piece of the inscribed slab. The date quoted in it would fall in the reign of Yādava Rāmachandra
but the eulogy is that of Siṅghaṇa (Mys. Arch. Rep. 1929, pp. 142 ff. and plate XVII ; above, Vol. XXV, p. 202
and f.n. l.).
[2] Above, Vol. XXV, p. 203. It is known that Bhōja II was styled Paśchimachakravartin by his protégé
Sōmadēva who wrote the work Śabdārṇavachandrikā in the colophon of which Bhōja is given this and many other
paramount titles (Bom, Gaz., Vol. I, part ii, p. 549.) A chief called Paśchimarāya-Dāmōdara was an adversary of
Gaṅgaya-Sāhaṇi, a subordinate of Kākatīya Gaṇapati mentioned in inscriptions of date 1250 A.C. and later (No.
283 of 1905 of the Mad. Epi. Coll. ; SII, Vol. X, No. 332). His identity, however, has not been established.
[3] Bom. Gaz., Vol. I, part ii, pp. 524 and 549.
[4] Ibid., p. 524.
[5] No. 446 of 1919 of the Mad. Ep. Coll.
[6] No. 34 of 1893 of the Mad. Ep. Coll., published in SII, Vol. IV, as No. 847. The relevant passage as published reads :
Urāṁsi varṇāvalli-chitritāni kar-āṁbujāni truṭit-āṁgulīni |
yasmin parikrudhyati Sēvaṇānāṁ trāṇaṁ kshamēraṁ(m=aikaṁ) na tu hētaya[ḥ*] svāh [||v. 13*].
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