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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA But we do not find it used in that general manner, at any rate in the Râshṭrakûṭa records. In those records, as far as they have been considered at present, we perhaps find the biruda Śrîvallabha suggested in the case of Kṛishṇa I. ; but, if so, it is put forward for him in verse, in a very unusual and inconclusive fashion, and not in a record of his own time. We have it first apparently established[1] in the case of Gôvinda III., by the formal prose passages of his own records ; and it is certainly used to denote him in a verse in the Baroda grant of his time. We next find it put forward, in verse, for his son Amôghavarsha I. ; but this is done in a late record of A.D 915, and under circumstances which suggest that it was used simply as a convenient metrical substitute for his formal biruda Lakshmîvallabha, which, though synonymous in meaning, is not the same appellation in form. We meet with it next in the case of Indra III., in the formal prose passage of one of the records of his time. We find it last used to denote Kṛishṇa III., in a verse which stands in his records of A.D. 940 and 959. And we thus have it established as a distinctive official appellation,─ by formal prose passages, which, as has already been said, are far more decisive in any points of this than the verses are,─ only in the cases of Gôvinda III. (apparently) and Indra III. From this, we might conclude that, in a Râshṭrakûṭa record referable to about the last quarter of the eighth century A.D., the biruda Śrîvallabha must denote Gôvinda III., for whom we have the date of A.D. 794 from his Paiṭhaṇ grant. And, if we accept the indication that is given in the formal prose passage in the Râdhanpur grant of A.D. 807, it certainly was a well established biruda of him, and an important and distinctive one because there, and in the corresponding passage in the Paiṭhaṇ grant of A.D. 794, it takes the place that is occupied by his proper name in the Waṇî grant of A.D. 807.
Nevertheless, Śrîvallabha was not the principal and most distinctive appellation of Gôvinda III. As we have already seen, in later times he was remembered only as Jagattuṅga. A verse in the Nausârî grant of A.D. 817 seems clearly to single out Pṛithivîvallabha as his special vallabha-appellation. But even that was not this most distinctive appellation. His most distinctive biruda during the earlier part of his reign was, evidently, Prabhûtavarsha. Even the Nîlgund inscription of A.D. 866 of his successor’s reign,─written at a time when there was, plainly, a preference for speaking of him as Jagattuṅga, tells us that he was Prabhûtavarsha, who became Jagattuṅga ; and the only other of his birudas that it mentions, is Kîrtinârâyaṇa. In the records of his own time, the biruda Prabhûtavarsha occupies a prominent position in the Paiṭhaṇ, Waṇî, and Râdhanpur grants, and also in even the Tôrkhêḍê grant ; standing, in all of them, before either his proper name or the biruda Śrîvallabha, and, in the Tôrkhêḍê grant, also before the introduction of the biruda Jagattuṅga. In the grant of A.D. 804 from the Kanarese country, the biruda Prabhûtavarsha is used, and no other, with his proper name. The same is the case in an undated inscription in the Shimoga district, Mysore, which refers itself to the reign of a Prabhûtavarsha-Gôvindarasa, and is, no doubt, to be referred to his time.[2] And an inscription at Shisuvinhâḷ in the Baṅkâpur tâluka, Dhârwâr district,[3] which can only be referred to his time, mentions him, as the reigning king, as “ the favourite of Fortune and the Earth, the Mahârâjâdhirâja, the Paramêśvara, the Bhaṭâra, Prabhûtavarsha,” without presenting any other biruda, and without even finding it necessary to give proper name. And there are records in Mysore, which shew unmistakably that Dhruva was distinctively known by the biruda of Śrîvallabha, at least as well as was his son Gôvinda III. One of them is an inscription at Matakere in the Heggaḍadêvankôṭe tâluka, Mysore ________________________________ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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