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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
The characters resemble very closely those of the inscriptions[1] of the Sātavāhana king
Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi (circa 106-30 A.D.) and his son Vāsishṭhīputra Puḷumāvi (circa 130-59 A.D.)
from Nāsik, Amarāvati and other places.[2] The inscription may therefore be assigned to a date
about the first half of the second century A.D. The alphabet employed in the inscription
under study is decidedly earlier than the Jaggayapeṭa[3] (Nandigama Taluk, Krishna District) and
Nāgārjunikoṇḍa[4] (Paland Taluk, Guntur District) inscriptions of the Ikshvāku king Vīrapurushadatta who flourished about the middle of the third century A.D.[5] The letter n has a straight
horizontal base, while l has not the angular or flat base noticed in the Ikshvāku inscriptions. The
letter t also does not exhibit the looped type noticed occasionally in the Sātavāhana epigraphs of
the age of Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi and Vāsishṭhīputra Puḷumāvi but generally in the Ikshvāku
records of the time of Vīrapurushadatta. The forms of the letters l, t and n, as found in the
present epigraph, may be compared with their forms generally noticed in the later Sātavāhana
inscriptions discovered in the Krishna-Guntur region and its neighbourhood such as the Amarāvatī
inscriptions[6] of Vāsishṭhīputra Puḷumāvi, the Kodavali inscription[7] of Chaṇḍa or Chandra Śāta,
the Myakadoni inscription[8] of Puḷumāvi and the Chinna inscription[9] of Yajña Śātakarṇi. The
comparison would suggest that the inscription under study should have to be assigned to a date
about the time of Vāsishṭhīputra Puḷumāvi and not to the period after the end of Śātavāhana rule
in the said area about the close of the first quarter of the third century A.D.[10]
The language of the inscription is Prakrit and no influence of Sanskrit is noticed in it except
in the use of the vowel ai in the word Airasa in line 2. As regards orthography, there is no case
of the reduplication of consonants or the use of conjuncts. But the modification of j to y in the
word mahārāyasa (lines 2-3) is interesting to note.
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[1] Above, Vol. VIII, pp. 60 ff. and Plates ; Arch. Surv. S. India, Vol. I, p. 100, Plate LVI, No. 1.
[2] For the date of the Sātavāhana kings, see The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 202, 204. In spite of the great
difference between the paleography of this record and that of the Mañchikallu inscription edited below, both
the epigraphs have been assigned in the Annual Reports on South Indian Epigraphy, referred to above, to the third
century A.D. The Mañchikallu inscription no doubt belongs to the end of the third century ; but the present
record is certainly earlier by more than a century.
[3] Arch. Surv. S. Ind., Vol. I, Plates LXII-LXIII.
[4] See, e.g., above, Vol. XX, pp.1 ff. and Plates.
[5] The Successors of the Sātvāhanas, p. 16 ; cf. The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 225.
[6] Arch. Surv. S. India., Vol. I, p. 100, Plate LVI, No. 1.
[7] Above, Vol. XVIII, pp. 316 ff. and Plate. This inscription has been differently read and interpreted by
Sten Konow and Krishna Sastri. We are inclined to disagree with the views of both the scholars and to read the
epigraph as follows :
1 Sidhaṁ raṁño Vāsiṭhī-
2 putasa sāmi-sir[i]-
3 Cha[ṁ]ḍa[sāta]sa [sava]chhare
4 [10 1] he pa 2 diva[sa] 2 [ | ]
5 amacha-Sa[ta]mi[t]ene(na) dhama
6 thāp[i]ta |
The inscription therefore seems to be dated on the second day of the second fortnight of Hemanta (i.e. winter)
of the eleventh regnal year of Vāsishṭhīputra Chaṇḍa Śāta (or Chandra Śāta), when his amātya (i.e. a minister or
executive officer) named Satyamitra established a dharma in the vicinity of the inscription. The word dharma here
apparently means a religious object or institution, traces of which have been noticed near the findspot of the record
(cf. op. cit., p. 317).
Ibid., Vol. XIV, p. 155 and Plate.
[9] JASB, Vol. XIV, 1920, Plate XVI. The palaeography of this record closely resembles that of the Ikshvāku
inscriptions of about the middle of the third century and does not look earlier than the Kodavali and Myakadoni
inscriptions, although the rulers mentioned in these two records are generally supposed to have flourished later
than Yajña Śātakarṇi.
[10] Cf. The Successors of Sātavāhanas, p. 163.
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