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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA (length ) on (each) forty lengths ; (but) below thirty, and above two hundred, half a length.[1] This shall continue ! (L. 10) ─ Whosoever destroys this will associate himself with people who kill a thousand brown cows of Bâraṇâsi ! * * * * * * The appellations of the Râshṭrakûṭas of Mâlkhêḍ. This study is the outcome of some inquiries that were commenced with a view to determining exactly who may be the king Śrîvallabha, to whose time the Lakshmêshwar inscription, C. above, refers itself. For that purpose, it was necessary only to go as far as Amôghavarsha I. But some other points of interest presented themselves during the inquiry, in connection with the proper names of the kings as well as their birudas and other appellations ; and it seemed useful and convenient to go through the whole dynasty. I am not sure that I have quite exhausted the subject ; it is difficult to do that in dealing with so many records, edited in different works and not arranged chronologically, and some of them published in Nâgarî characters which do not adapt themselves to capitals, thick type, and other devices for catching the eye quickly. But, at any rate, I am able to put forward result that can be easily completed, at any future time, in respect of any few details that may have been overlooked here. I may add that I commenced the inquiry with the expectation that the result would prove that the Śrîvallabha of the record in question, and of an important passage which furnishes a date, could only be Gôvinda III. The steps by which we are driven to a different conclusion on this point, will disclose themselves in due course.
Two general remarks may as well be made here. One is that, for any particular point, it is usually sufficient to refer to only that passage, the earliest in date, which first brings it forward ; the value of a statement is seldom, if ever, in any way enhanced by the mere repetition of it in successive records which do no more than reproduce the exact words of earlier records. The other is that, in matters of technical detail, prose records in general, and in particular the formal preambles of the prose passages which introduce the special subject of each copper-plate charter, are obviously of more importance than any preliminary verses, in which flights of fancy were naturally permissible and were plainly sometimes indulged in, and in which absolute accuracy might at any time be made subordinate by an unskillful composer to metrical and other similar necessities. For a complete list of the Râshṭrakûṭas of Mâlkhêḍ and of the first Gujarât branch, for use in connection with the remarks made in the following pages, reference may be made to the Table given by me in Vol. III. above, opposite page 54, or to the same Table in my Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts (in the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I. Part II.), opposite page 386. The first paramount king in the dynasty of the Râshṭrakûṭas of Mâlkhêḍ was Dantidurga. Of his time, we have the Sâmângaḍ grant, issued in A.D. 754. And this record, it may be mentioned, opens the pedigree with his great-grandfather Gôvinda I., and thus carries the family back as far as do any of the subsequent records, with the exception of the inscription _____________________________________ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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