South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

Of the writing on the reverse, the central slanting line of jya is not clearly made, while the left part of the figure for 1 is cut off. These writings no doubt quote the date of the issue of the coin under study, the observe giving Śaka-sa (i.e. Śaka-saṁvatsarē) 1411 and the reverse rājya (i.e. rājya-saṁvatsarē) 15, i.e. the regnal year 15. Thus the coin was issued by king Bhairavasiṁha of Tīrabhukti (i.e. Tirhut or Mithilā, i.e. North Bihar), who was the son of king Darpanārāyaṇa, in the 15th year of his reign, which corresponded to Śaka 1411 or 1489-90 A. D. Bhairavasiṁha thus ascended the throne of Tirhut about Śaka 1397 or 1475-76 A.D.

There is no doubt that the king who issued the coin under study is identical with Bhairavasiṁha alias Rūpanārāyaṇa alias Harinārāyaṇa who was the son of Narasiṁha Darpanārāyaṇa of the Ōinvār dynasty of Tirhut, which flourished in the period between the middle of the14th to the first half of the 16th century A.D. The coin is the only one of Bhairavasiṁha so far discovered and one of the very few of the Ōinvārs as yet published. As a matter of fact, very few of the Ōinvār rulers issued coins. Our coin throws some light on the rather obscure history of the king as well as of the local ruling family of medieval India, to which he belonged.

The history of the rulers of the Ōinvār dynasty of Tirhut is little known and their chronology full of confusion. The confusion is due to many factors such as the uncertainty about the initial year of the Lakshmaṇasēna Saṁvat or La. Saṁ. used in the dating of many of the literary records of the period and tract in question, the possibility of contemporaneous or conjoint rule for some years of the predecessor and successor in several cases, and the unreliability of some of the local traditions. Since the late medieval period, the La. Saṁ. is calculated as starting from 1119 A.D. ; but as regards the earlier dates the initial year varies between 1108 and 1119 A.D.^[1] For the sake of convenience, we have tentatively taken 1119 A.D. as the starting point of the era in our calculations in the following pages. Another great difficulty is that even when the La. Saṁ. year is mentioned together with the corresponding Śaka year and verifiable astronomical details are provided for a date, they are generally irregular according to Swamikannu Pillai’s Indian Ephemeris. This is evidently due to the fact that the local almanacs from which the dates were quoted, were based on a defective calculation.

In the following lines, we are offering a sketch of Ōinvār history and chronology on the basis of the following works : (1) M. M. Chakravarti, History of Mithilā during the Pre-Mughal Period (JASB , N.S., Vol. XI, 1915, pp. 406-433 ; especially pp. 415-33) ; (2) R. K. Choudhary, The Oinwāras of Mithilā (JBRS, Vol. XL, pp. 99-121) ; (3) J. Eggeling, Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Library of the India Office, Part IV, pp. 874-76, No. 2564 ; (4) G. A. Grierson, (a) Vidyāpati and his Contemporaries (Ind. Ant., Vol. XIV, 1885, pp.182 ff.) ; (b) On some Medieval Kings of Mithilā (Ibid., Vol. XVIII, 1899, pp. 57-58) ; (c) An Introduction to Maithilī Language ; (5) S. N. Singh, History of Tirhut, 1915 ; and (6) U. Thakur, History of Mithilā , 1956, Chapter VI : The Oinavāras (pp. 290-339).

Harisiṁha, the last ruler of the Karnāṭa dynasty of Mithilā, was overthrown by Sultān Ghiyāsuddīn Tughluk Shāh (1320-25 A.D.) of Delhi about 1324 A.D.^[2] Sometime later, about the middle of the fourteenth century, a Brāhmaṇa named Kāmēśvara Ṭhākur, who may have originally been the Rājapaṇḍita at Harisiṁha’s court, obtained the Zamindari of a considerable part of the country from Sultān Fīrūz Shāh (1351-87 A.D.). The dynasty founded by the Brāhmaṇa is called Ōinavāra (Ōinivāra) or Ōinvār after the village of Ōinī in the Muzaffarpur District, which one of his ancestors received from a Karṇāṭa king. The family is sometimes also named after

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^[1] Hist. Beng., Dacca University, Vol. I, pp. 233 ff.
^[2] I. Prasad, Hist. Med. Ind., p. 266.