|
The Indian Analyst
|
|
South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA The executor of the Rēyūru grant was therefore Rājāditya who was the son of Sōmāditya and the ruler of Nandakurra. The word nṛipēśvara in these cases apparently means ‘ a ruler ’ and not ‘ a king of kings ’ or ‘ a ruler named Īśvara ’.[1] The chiefs of Nandakurra were no doubt feudatories of the Pallava kings of Kāñchī at least during the reigns of Paramēśvaravarman I and Narasiṁhavarman II. Rājāditya, son of Sōmāditya, was preceded in the rulership of Nandakurra by Kuḷavarman, son of Tagīº or Nagī-pallava whose name seems to point to his descent from the Pallava family. But what relations existed between the two cannot be determined without further evidence. Lines 23-25 record that the document was written by Viśēshavidita belonging to the Ghanaskandha family (or, the family of Ghanaskandha who may have been an ancestor of the scribe) on Sunday, Paushya-sudi 13 in the nineteenth regnal year of Paramēśvaravarman I. The record then ends with the maṅgala : svasty=astu gō-Brāhmanēbhyaḥ, “ Let happiness come to the cows and Brāhmaṇas.”[2] The importance of the present inscription lies in its date. No dated inscription of Paramēśvaravarman I has hitherto been published and this happens to be the first record of the king, which offers a verifiable date. So long there was no means to determine the date of this king’s accession with any amount of certainty. Now, with the help of this record and the Rēyūru grant which is the only dated inscription of his son, the reign period of Paramēśvaravarman I can be determined with a fair degree of precision.
The Pallava king Narasiṁhavarman I seems to have been living about the year 668 A.D. when, with his help, Mānavarman succeeded in seizing the throne of Ceylon,[3] whereas the Chālukya monarch Vikramāditya I is known from the Gadvāl plates,[4] dated the 25th April, 674 A.D., to have fought with the three successive Pallava kings named Narasiṁha (i.e. Narasiṁhavarman I), Mahēndra (i.e. Mahēndravarman II), and Īśvara (i.e. Paramēśvaravarman I). These facts show that the death of Mahēndravarman II and the accession of his son Paramēśvaravarman I took place something between 668 A.D. and the 25th April of 674 A.D. Now the charter under study was issued in the nineteenth regnal year of Paramēśvaravarman I, that is to say, sometime between 687 A.D. and April 693 A.D. The exact date when the charter was written is Paushya-sudi 13, Sunday, while the grant was made on the occasion of the Ayana or Uttarāyaṇa-saṅkrānti (i.e. Makara-saṅkrānti). In his recent work entitled A History of South India,[5] Prof. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri gives the duration of the rule of Paramēśvaravarman I as 670-80 A.D. and of his son and successor Narasiṁhavarman II as 680-720 A.D., while we have suggested the following reign-periods for these two Pallava kings : Paramēśvaravarman I, circa 670-95 A.D. ; Narasiṁhavarman II, circa 695-722 A.D.[6] In the absence of any dated record of the time of the rulers in question, difference of opinion as regard the duration of their reign-periods was of course inevitable. But now we have a record of each of the two kings, both of them bearing verifiable dates. From the present epigraph we learn that Paramēśvaravarman I ruled at least down to his nineteenth regnal year and that, in the said year of his reign, Paushya-sudi 13, was a Sunday, although whether Uttarāyaṇa occurred on the same day or a few days earlier or later cannot be determined from the words of _____________________________________________
[1] The interpretation of the above verse of the Rēyūru grant offered elsewhere (above, Vol. XXIX, p. 93.
note 6) seems to be wrong. The name of the ājñāpti has been taken there to be Īśvara who is supposed to veha
been the son of Sōmāditya and grandson of Rājāditya.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
