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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA Prâkṛitists, but all the corrupted or more familiar forms[1] of the Sanskṛit names, which we meet with mostly in the vernacular records, and some of which cannot, perhaps, be exactly accounted for by any of the regular rules of Prâkṛit grammar. These Prâkṛit names were not used at all freely in the verses : in fact, we can only quote a verse in the Waṇî grant of A.D 807, repeated in the Râdhanpur grant of the same year, which speaks of Dhruva as Dhôra, without any ending to the name,[2] and some verses in the Kaḷas inscription of Gôvinda IV., of A.D 930,[3] of which three present his name as Gojjigadêva, one gives it as Gojjigavallabha or “ Gojjiga, the Vallabha,”[4] one speaks of him as Gojjigabhûpâla or “ king Gojjiga,” and the remaining one calls him simply Gojjiga, without anything attached to it, and a verse in the Kardâ grant of A.D. 972, which mentions Khoṭṭigadêva.[5] The Prâkṛit names do not appear to occur anywhere in the formal preambles of the prose passages of the copper-plate grants, from which we have quoted above the usage of those passages in respect of the Sanskṛit forms of the names and of some appellations that were sometimes substituted there for the proper names. In the prose records on stone, the Prâkṛit names are sometimes found without any ending; for instance, Dôra, in the case of Dhruva, in the Naregal inscription,[6] and Gôyinda in the case of Gôvinda III. in his Kanarese grant of A.D. 804,[7] and Kannara, in the case of Kṛishṇa II., in the Aihoḷe inscription of A.D. 911-12.[8] We more usually find the ending dêva attached to the Prâkṛit names ; for instance, we have Kannaradêva, in the case of Kṛishṇa III., in the Âtakûr inscription of A.D. 949-50,[9] and in the Soraṭûr inscription of A.D. 951,[10] and in the Tirukkalukkunram inscriptions of his seventeenth and nineteenth years,[11] and in the Vellore inscription of his twenty-sixth year,[12]─ Koṭṭigadêva, in the Adaraguñchi inscription of A.D. 971,[13] and in the Hirê-Handigôḷ inscription and the Nâgâvi inscription at the temple of Kannûra-Bassappa,[14]─ and Kakkaladêva, in the Guṇḍûr inscription of A.D. 973 :[15] and so again, in the Hebbâḷ inscription of A.D. 975, which is a Western Gaṅga record, we have Kannaradêva and Baddegadêva.[16] Evidently, the more formal official practice was to attach the ending dêva to the Prâkṛit names. But we can readily see that it was not an integral or essential part of those names, and that it may be disregarded for all general purposes. To the rule of using the ending dêva with the Prâkṛit names in prose passages, only one exception, substituting another ending, is forthcoming ; it is found in the Kaḷas inscription,[17] which
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