South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

Officials have adopted the form ‘ Gudgeri.’^[1] We already know one record from this place,─ the inscription of A.D. 1076-77,^[2] which gives its name in the Kanarese form of Guḍigere and in the Sanskṛitised form of Dhvajataṭâka. An earlier mention of it is found in the Tâḷgund inscription of A.D. 997,^[3] which mentions, as a feudatory of the Western Châlukya king Taila II., a certain Bhîmarasa,^[4] with the biruda of Tailapanaṅkakâra or “ the champion of Tailapa,” who was then governing the [Banavâ]si twelve-thousand, the Sâtaḷige thousand (the Sântaḷige thousand of other records),^[5] the Ki[sukâ]ḍ seventy, and an agrahâra the name of which is either Samasi-Guḍigere or possibly Savasi-Guḍigere.^[6] The first component of this name evidently denotes the modern ‘ Sownshee ’ of the maps, seven miles-west-by-north from Guḍigere. The two villages thus constituted in ancient times an agrahâra, which was named after both of them. And, as the Tâḷgund record cites, among the witnesses to the matter which it registers, (the people or elders of) the padineṇṭ-agrahâra, it would appear that the Samasi-Guḍigere agrahâra was one of the eighteen agrahâras. The present inscription is on a stone on the north side in front of a temple of Kalamêśvara at Guḍigere.

The sketch submitted to me shews a narrow high stone, with a tall panelled head, probably about four feet high, rounded at the top. At the bottom of the outer panelling, on each side there is a full-blown water-lily ; and at the bottom of the middle panel there is a large circle, with a big dot in the centre of it, standing on a square or rectangular pedestal, from each side of which there projects a floral ornamentation. Then comes the writing, immediately below the above, on the bottom part of the panelled head. Below the writing the stone contracts to a square face, probably about one foot square, on which there is the sculpture of an elephant, standing to the proper left, with his trunk hanging down and the tip of it turned up inwards, and, in fact, depicted very similarly to the elephant at the top of the stone at Baḷagâmi which contains the inscription of the time of the Western Chalukya king Vinayâditya and the Sêndraka prince Pogilli,^[7] and─ (except that there is a band or strap round the body of the elephant)─ to the elephant at the top of the Peggu-ûr Gaṅga inscription of A.D. 978.^[8]Below

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^[1] It may be remarked that the name-boards exhibited at railway stations, while large enough and clear enough, are anything but a safe guide to the actual forms of place-names, though they are likely to do more than anything else towards perpetuating certain erroneous or imperfect forms. I have seen, more than once, the same name exhibited in three different spellings on the same platform,─ in one form in Kanarese characters, in another in Marâṭhî characters, and in still another in English characters,─ and not one of them absolutely correct in all details.
^[2] Ind. Ant. Vol. XVIII. p. 35.
^[3] Pâli, Sanskṛit, and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. 214 ; and see Mysore Inscrs. p. 186.─ Here, as in various other cases, the details given by me from the photographs of the records are not all presented in Mysore Inscriptions. No doubt, more complete and correct accounts of the contents of the records included in that book, will be given when Mr. Rice issues the volumes of the Epigraphia Carnatica which will deal with the Shimoga and Chitaldroog districts. Meanwhile, his Mysore Inscriptions still serves as index and guide to the use of the photographs from Colonel Dixon’s collection which were reproduced in my Pâli, Sanskṛit, and Old-Canarese Inscriptions.
^[4] He is probably described as a Mahâsâmanta ; but the last four syllables cannot be read with certainty in the photograph.
^[5] The photograph seems to distinctly give the name here as Sâtaḷige,─ without any nasal after the â.
^[6] In the second syllable of the first component of the name, the original has a character, namely, the mediӕval form of m or of v noticed on page 258 below, which in the photograph may be read either as m or as v. It is probably m. But an ink-impression is required, to settle the definitely.
^[7] For a photograph, shewing the elephant, see No. 98 of Colonel Dixon’s collection, reproduced as No. 152 in my P. S. O.-C. Inscrs. For the bearing of the emblem on the Baḷagâmi inscription, see page 72 above.
^{[8 See the lithographs in Ind. Ant. Vol. VI. p. 101, and Coorg Inscrs., opposite p. 5.─ There is a very similar elephant on the stone that contains the Gaṅga inscription at Kyâtanahaḷḷi (Ep. Carn. Vol. III , Sr. 147, lithograph) ; where, however, it is depicted with its head raised and its back sloping.─ For another Gaṅga elephant, see the lithograph of the Tâyalûr inscription (ibid., Md. 14) ; but that one differs from the others, in being represented as walking or running and with the tip of its trunk turned up forwards.─ Sir Walter Elliot has given us a representation of the elephant-seal of one or other of the spurious grants of the Gaṅga series, in his Coins of}