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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA No. 21.─AMUDALAPADU PLATES OF VIKRAMADITYA I, YEAR 5 (1 Plate) D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND The inscription was published in the Telugu journal Bhārati for May 1957, pp. 86 ff., by Pandit Gadiyaram Ramakrishna Sarma[1] who secured the plates for examination from Mr. Narayana Reddi, a pleader of Vanaparti in the Mahbubnagar District of the old Hyderabad State, now in Andra, through Mr. Dumpali Rami Reddi. Mr. Narayana Reddi got the plates about 20 years ago from an inhabitant of the village of Āmudālapāḍu in the Alampur Taluk, formerly of the Raichur District of Hyderabad but now forming a part of the Mahbubnagar District of Andhra. The inscription is incised on four plates each measuring about 7·1″ in length and about 3″ in height. They are strung on a ring, the ends of which are secured beneath a seal containing the well-known Varāha emblem of the Chālukyas. The borders of the plates are not raised. Of the four plates, the first and the last are inscribed on the inner side only while the second and third plates have writing on both the sides. There are altogether 48 lines of writing in the inscription. They are distributed on the inscribed faces of the plates as follows : I─7 lines ; II A─7 lines ; IIB─8 lines ; IIIA─9 lines ; IIIB─8 lines ; IV─9 lines. The last line on IIIA consists only of two letters. The weight of the plates is 75 tolas and that of the ring with the seal 16·5 tolas.
The characters belong to the old Telugu-Kannaḍa alphabet and closely resemble those of the published records of the issuer of the charter, viz. Chālukya Vikramāditya I (655-81 A.D.) of Bādāmi.[2] As regards palaeography, it is difficult in some cases to distinguish between the medial signs for i and ī and between the consonants ch and v, n and ṇ, etc. The language of the record is Sanskrit. In point of orthography and style, the inscription closely resembles most other charters of Vikramāditya I. The orthography of the record is characterised by the tendency to use class-nasals in preference to anusvāra and the rare use of the upadhmānīya (cf. line 9). There are several instances of visarga-sandhi as in mātṛibhis=sapta (line 3) and gurōś=śriyaº (line 19). The grant is dated in the 5th regnal year of the king. As Vikramāditya I is known to have ascended the throne in 654-55 A. D.,[3] the issue of the grant may be assigned to 659-60 A. D. Since the tithi on which the grant was made is stated to have been the Vaiśākha-paurṇamāsī, the actual date seems to be the 30th April 660 A. D. _____________________________________________
[1] Recently Pandit Sarma has also published the Pallepāḍu (Alampur Taluk, Mahbubnagar District, Andhra)
plates of Vinayāditya I in the Journal of the Deccan History and Culture, Hyderabad, Vol. III, No. 1, January 1956.
This charter was issued on the full-moon day of Vaiśākha in Śaka 604 expired (27th April, 682 A.D.) and the second
regnal year of the king who is stated to have granted, when he was stationed at Bānuṁgal-nagara (modern Pāngal
in the Nagar Karnul Taluk of the Mahbubnagar District), the village of Paṇiyaḷ, situated on the southern bank of
the Kṛishṇabēṇṇā at a distance of one gavyūta from Dharmapura, in favour of a Brāhmaṇa named Mādhavasvāmin.
The grant was made at the request of Svāmikarāja.
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