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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA kumāra or son of Ballāḷa.[1] But he dismisses the fact, not supported as it was by any other known record, with the remark that there was probably some mistake about either the original or the transcript.[2] Commenting on the same epigraph, Rao Bhadur R. Narasimhachar contended that Sōmēśvara mentioned in the record must have called himself the king’s son by courtesy ; for, Ballāḷa had no son of his own by that name. He has, however, shown that the record could be attributed, undated as it is, to 1206 A.D., judging from the internal evidence of the mention of Nayakīrtti’s disciples in this record as in some other dated records allied with this epigraph.[3] It may be noted that the cyclic year Akshaya corresponding to 1205-06 A.D. cited in this record as the year from which the tax exemptions alluded to in it were to take effect, falls well within the reign-period of Ballāḷa II (1173-1220 A.D.). It may not be unreasonable to presume that the inscription itself should have been actually engraved and set up sometime prior to Akshaya inasmuch as its object was to proclaim the grant of exemptions of specified taxes and the proclamation itself was to take affect from the year Akshaya. This we will discuss in the sequel.
The date of Narasimha II’s birth, viz. Śaka 1105, Śubhakṛit (1182 A.D.), is furnished by an epigraph from Aḷesandra.[4] The earliest record[5] mentioning him as administering in association with his father bears the date Śaka 1128, Krōdhana (=1205 A.D.).[6] He should have been a young man about this period. To revert to the Śravaṇa-Beḷgoḷa epigraph, in the light of the categorical expression dvitīyaṁ kumāraṁ applied to Narasiṁha in the record under review, it appears that the Sōmēśvara mentioned in the former inscription was the elder son of Vīra Ballāḷa. The record has been attributed to 1205-06 A.D. for reasons already referred to. But the cyclic year Akshaya from which or rather from the commencement of which (by inference) the tax-exemptions proclaimed in the record were to be effective and which corresponded to 1206 A.D. could not have been the year in which the record was set up. Allowing a reasonable time for the proclamation to be effectively made known to the public concerned, we may suppose that the inscription might have been set up some time in the year Krōdhana preceding the year Akshaya. But we have seen above that Narasiṁha figures already in Krōdhana actively in association with his father in the administrative activities of the kingdom in an inscription[7] from Gañjigaṭṭe in Chitaldurg, which bears the date Śaka 1128, Krōdhana, Chaitra, paurṇamī, Monday, Saṅkramaṇa-vyatīpāta, the details corresponding to 1205 A.D., April 4, Monday, f.d.t., .47, on which day there occurred a lunar eclipse not mentioned in the record. Whether Sōmēśvara was still living on this date and was also associated with his father in the administrative activities of the kingdom, we do not know. If he was dead by this date, then his Śravaṇa-Beḷgoḷa record must have been set up at the very commencement _________________________________________________
[1] Bomb. Gaz., Vol. I, Part II, p. 502, note 2.
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