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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA No. 4.─ KONNUR SPURIOUS INSCRIPTION OF AMOGHAVARSHA I. ;
SAKA-SAMVAT 782. The stone which bears this inscription is built into a wall of the temple of Paramêśvara at Konnûr,[1] the ‘ Khonoor ’ of the map, a large village on the south bank of the Malparbhâ river, 23 miles in a north-easterly direction from Nawalgund, the chief town of the Nawalgund tâluka, Dhârwâr district ; Indian Atlas, sheet No. 41, long. 75º 34ʹ E., lat. 15º 51ʹ N. I edit the inscription from an excellent impression, kindly given to me by Dr. Fleet.[2] The inscribed surface of the stone measures about 5ʹ 4½ʺ high by 2ʹ 10ʺ broad. Above the writing, in the arched top with which the stone ends, there are some sculptures, viz., in the middle, a shrine holding a sitting Jaina Tîrthaṁkara, with a chowrie-bearer on either side of him ; on the proper left of the shrine, a cow with a sucking calf and, above them, a sword and the sun ; and on the right of the shrine, another chowrie-bearer and an elephant, with the new moon above them. The writing is well executed, and for the most part in an excellent state of preservation. The size of the letters is about 7/16.ʺ The character are Kanarese of the eleventh or twelfth century A.D. The language is Sanskṛit, excepting a verse in lines 62-64, and the prose passage at the end of the inscription, lines 70-72, which are in Kanarese. The greater part of the text is in verse. In respect of orthography, it will suffice to draw attention to the frequent use of the Draviḍian ḷ, and of the sign of the upadhmânîya (also in the word puhpa for pushpa, l. 40), and to the occasional employment of the sign of the jihvâmûlîya (in dharmmah=kêvalaṁ, l. 14, yali=kâṁchanaṁ, l. 54, and kîrttih=kakubhâṁ, l. 69).
The inscription divides itself into two parts. Lines 1 to (the word sarvvaṁ in) 59 record a grant, professedly made by the Râshṭrakûṭa king Amôghavarsha [I.] on a date which falls in A.D. 860. Lines 59 (from the word mithyâbhâva) to 72, on the other hand, after praises of the Jaina creed and the two sages Mêghachandra-Traividya and his son Vîranandin, inform us that, at the request of Huliyamarasa, the Mahâprabhu of Koḷanûra, and others, Vîranandin had a copper charter, which they had seen, rewritten here as a stone charter. According to this statement, lines 1-59 of the inscription were copied from a copper-plate inscription ;[3] and from the dates which we possess for Vîranandin and his father Mêghachandra-Traividya, the time when this copy was made, and when he inscription, as we have it, was engraved, may approximately be determined to be the middle of the twelfth century A.D. From an inscription at Śravaṇa-Beḷgoḷa (Roman text, p. 26, ll. 3-6) we know that Mêghachandra-Traividya died on Thursday, the 2nd December A.D. 1115 ;[4] and according to a notice published by Mr. Pathak,[5] Vîranandin finished the writing of his Âchâra-sâra on a date which I find to correspond to Monday, the 25th May A.D. 1153. The principal part of the inscription (lines 1-59, the alleged copy of a copper-plate inscription) records, that─ at a total eclipse of the moon on the full-moon tithi of the month Ãsvayuja
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