South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

Before entering, however, on any general remarks, I now put forward revised versions of three Western Gaṅga records, final renderings of which have not as yet been arrived at.

A.- Doḍḍahuṇḍi Inscription of Nîtimârga and Satyavâkya.

This inscription was brought to notice by Mr. Rice in 1894, when he edited it, with a lithograph. in his Ep. Carn. Vol. III., TN. 91. I give my rendering of it from an ink-impression, for which I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Hultzsch. The collotype is from the ink-impression. The photo-etching is from a photograph of the stone itself.

Doḍḍahuṇḍi is a village somewhere in the Mȗgȗr hôbli of the Tirumakȗḍlu-Narasîpur tâluka of the Mysore district. It should be shewn in sheet No. 60 or 61 of the Indian Atlas ; but it is not to be found there.^[1] The name means “ large hamlet ;” and it is probably an appellation of somewhat modern introduction, as the records does not appear to include any name answering to it, and gives the name of the village itself, or else of another village which gave the name to the circle to which this village then belonged, as Guldapâḍi. The inscription is on a stone, apparently about six feet high, which was found lying in a pond at Doḍḍahuṇḍi and is now in the Mysore Government Museum at Bangalore.

The upper part of the front of the stone is occupied by sculptures illustrating the scene that is referred to in the record, namely, the death of a prince who had the appellation of Nîtimârga. He is shewn lying on a couch, from the back of which there stand up two royal umbrellas. Near his head there stands his eldest son, Satyavâkya, with one similar umbrella behind him. And on the couch there is sated a follower of the prince, named Agarayya, who is represented as supporting across his knees the legs of the dying prince, and as holding with his right hand a dagger which he seems to be drawing out from the left side of the prince.-

The writing commences below the sculptures. Lines 1 to 6, on the front of the stone, cover an area about 3̍ 6̎ broad by 1ʹ 9ʺ high. Below them there is a blank space, about one foot high, which was evidently left void in order to allow of the stone being set upright in the ground without hiding any part of the record. Lines 7 to 24 are short lines down the side of the stone, covering an area about 9ʺ broad by 3ʹ 5ʺ high, with a similar blank space below them. And a line runs across the stone between lines 15 and 16, to mark a division of the text there. The writing on the front of the stone is in a state of fairly good preservation. The writing down the side of the stone has suffered more damage ; and for this reason, and also because it was not very convenient to introduce it in the Plate, this part of the record has not been reproduced.─ The characters are Kanarese, boldly formed and well executed. The size of them─ (by which I mean, here and always, the height of such letters as ga, cha, da, pa, etc., which are properly formed entirely between the limits of, so to speak, the lines of writing, without any projections above or below)─ ranges from about 1¼ʺ in the ga of Agarayyaṁ, line 4, to about 2½ʺ in the ṇ of Koṁguṇîvarman, line 1 ; the penultimate syllable ḷgu of line 6 is about 4¼ʺ high. The characters include final forms of r in line 3 and n in line 4, and also a final form of ḷ or else an ḷ with a virâma attached to it, in line 3. And they shew the lingual ḍ, distinguished from the dental d by a marked turning up and over of the right-hand end of the lower part of the letter ; it can be recognised very clearly in êridoḍe, line 4. Two of the characters which furnish the best test for undated records of the period to which this record belongs, do not occur here ; namely, the b and the guttural ṅ. In vakhya, by mistake for vâkya, line 6, we have a kh of the old square type,^[2] which cannot be placed much after A.D. 860. On the other hand, the l, which we have in Kovaḷâla, line 2, and also in kalnâḍu, line 8, is of the later cursive type, which cannot be placed much before A.D. 800 : we have it throughout the grant of Gôvinda III., of

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^[1] Mȗgȗr is in sheet No. 61 (1894), in lat. 12º 7ʹ long. 77º .
^[2] I use the word “ type ” intentionally. Plenty of instances will be forthcoming, in which the old square “ type” of the kh and other characters is flowed, though the actual “ forms ” present hardly a straight line at all.