South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

tumbler, a man of low caste, a Ḍôm or Gipsy ;’^[1] and─ (unless we should take turupina to be a mistake for turuvina)─ in line 3 it gives us turupu, either as a variant of turu, ‘ a cow, kine,’ or as the Kanarese form of some original Drâviḍian word which has given us, in Tamil, toruvu, ‘ a crowd, a herd of cows.’─ The orthography does not present anything calling for comment.

The inscription refers itself to the reign of a king named Dôra, who is to be identified with the Râshṭrakûṭa king Dhruva, son and successor of Kṛishṇa I.:^[2] his name occurs in the Prâkṛit form of Dhôra in, for instance, the Waṇî grant of A.D. 807 ;^[3] and the form Dôra, which we have in the present record, is to be taken as a corruption of Dhôra.^[4] The record mentions also a certain Mârakkarasa, who was governing the Banavâsi twelve-thousand province,─ of course, as a feudatory of Dhruva. The object of the inscription is to commemorate the death, on the occasion of a cattle-raid, of a local hero named Dommara-Kâḍava, “ Kâḍava of the Dombas or Gipsies.”

The record is not dated. But, as we have for Dhruva the date of A.D. 783-84,^[5] it may be placed roughly about A.D. 780.

TEXT.^[6]

1 Ôm^[7] Svasti Śrî-Dôraṁ prithuvi-râjyaṁ-keya Mâra^[-8]
2 kka-arasar=Bbanamâ(vâ)si-pannirchchârasinum^[9]=âḷe Nareyaṁ-
3 galla sâsirvvara turupina puyyaloḷ
4 Dommara-Kâḍavaṁ sattu svargg-[â*[layakk^[10]=êridan [||*]

TRANSLATION.

Ôm ! Hail ! While the glorious Dôra was reigning over the earth, and while Mârakkarasa was governing the Banavâsi twelve-thousand :─ In the fight^[11] about the cows^[12] of the thousand (Mahâjanas) (?) of Nareyaṁgal, Dommara-Kâḍava died and ascended to heaven.

C.- Lakshmêshwar inscription of the time of Srivallabha.

This inscription was brought to notice by me in 1882, in Ind. Ant. Vol. XI. p. 156, from an indistinct ink-impression which led me to speck of it then as only a fragment not capable of being edited. It is now edited for the first time. I edit it from a plain uninked estampage and an inked impression obtained by me in 1892. The collotype is from the estampage, which is better adapted for reproduction than is the ink-impression. In the title of the collotype, “ Śrîvallabha ” should be substituted for “ Gôvinda III.”^[13]

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^[1] The word domba, ḍomba,─ which, through the form ḍôma, gives the origin of the Gipsy expression Romany-Rye, “ a Gipsy gentleman,” = Ḍômani rôy, “ a king of the Ḍôms” (see Ind. Ant. Vol. XV. p. 15),─ occurs with both the lingual ḍ and the dental d ; but more usually, I think, with the lingual ḍ. In the present case, however, we seem to have clearly in domma the dental d. A Ḍomma figures in the Anamkoṇḍ inscription of A.D. 1163, among the foes of the Kâkatya king Rudradêva (Ind. Ant. Vol. XI. pp. 10, 17).
^[2] Dyn. Kan. Distrs. p. 393.
^[3] Ind. Ant. Vol. XI. p. 157, text line 6.
^[4] Compare the name Dôrayya,─ equivalent to Dhôrayya,─ in an inscription at Kuḍakûru (Ep. Carn. Vol. IV., Hs. 50).
^[5] See page 195 ff. below.
^[6] From the estampage.
^[7] Represented by a plain symbol.
^[8] Nothing is wanting after this syllable. The irregular corners of the estampage, here and at the bottom, are apparently due to projecting masonry work.
^[9] Read pannirchchâsiraman. The u of the last syllable is quite clear in the estampage, though it is hardly recognisable in the collotype.
^[10] See page 161 above, note 6.
^[11] Lit. “ in the beating, striking, etc.”
^[12] See at the top of this page.
^[13] See page 165 below, and note 3.