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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA who mentioned, in his Ajitatîrthakarapurâṇa or Ajitatîrthêśvaracharita (finished A.D. 993-94), a defeat inflicted on the army of Pañchala by a general of Taila II. named Nâgadêva. * * * * * * There is a great deal more to be said, both about the genuine history of the Gaṅgas, and about the spurious records. Both these subjects are extreme interest to me, partly because the history if the Gaṅgas of Mysore is greatly intermingled, for a certain period, with the history of the Kanarese districts of the Bombay Presidency, which has always been my special line of inquiry ; and party because the ancient history of India, as a whole, deserves, and unfortunately still in many respects remains, to be worked out critically and on sound bases, with an elimination of all the fables that have been imported into it from the spurious records of Mysore, from similar records in other parts of the country, and from various chronicles and lists of kings, some of them of early date and some of them quite modern, which have been credited with an authenticity and value which they do not really possess at all. But certain preliminary studies must be completed, before either of these subjects can be handled finally. In connection with the genuine history of the Gaṅgas of Mysore, we must, among other things, determine more closely the date of the overthrow of the original Pallava dynasty of Kâñchî, and of the supplantation of it by a branch of the Gaṅgas in the person of, probably, Vijaya-Narasiṁhavarman.[1] We must clear up certain points in the relations of the Râshṭrakûṭa kings Dhruva and Gôvinda III. with the princes of Mysore. And we must examine more fully certain traditions of the later Gaṅga dynasty of Kaliṅga, on the east coast of Southern India, which have a distinct connection with Mysore. These topics will be dealt with shortly. And, for the present, it is sufficient to throw out the following few hints as to what will be established.
We can now recognise clearly one genuine early Gaṅga prince anterior to Śivamâra I. He is the Satyâśraya-Dhruvarâja-Indravarman of the Goa grant,[2] which shews him as a viceroy in charge of four provinces under the Western Chalukya kings Kîrtivarman I., Maṅgalêśa, and Pulakêśin II., under an appointment running from A.D. 591-92. He was plainly a close relation, and probably a brother, of Durlabhadêvî of the Batpûra family, the wife of Pulakêśin I. He was an ancestor, and probably the grandfather, of Râjasiṁha-Indravarman I., the first king of the earlier Gâṅga dynasty of Kaliṅga, who adopted the era of A.D. 591-92 as the official reckoning in his dominions. And the name of “ the original great Bappûra race,” to which he is allotted by the Goa grant, must be derived from a secondary appellation of some great city in Mysore,- very likely of Kôlâr itself. We have perhaps another Gaṅga name, earlier than that of Śivamâra I., and belonging to the period A.D. 680 to 696, in the case of the official named Kândarba, who was the administrative officer when the grant was made which is recorded in the Baḷagâmi inscription of the Western Chalukya king Vinayâditya and the Sêndraka prince Pogilli.[3] The emblem at the top of that record is an elephant ; the elephant was not the crest of the Western Chalukyas ; nor is it likely that it was the crest of the Sêndrakas ;[4] but it was the crest _________________________________________________________ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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