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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA the same date.[1] I have found it used in various other records of his time in the Kanarese country. It was used very freely in the Râshṭrakûṭa records of subsequent regions, in all parts of their dominions. And I do not hesitate to decide that the explanation of the present date is to be found in connection with that system of reckoning, and that the expression ond¬-uttaraṁ, presented in this record, is the abbreviation of a full expression which would be ond-uttaram=aruvattaneya varsham, “ the sixtieth year increased by one.” I have not overlooked the possibly of the eleventh, twenty-first, thirty-first, forty-first, or fifty-first year being intended. But it is difficult to recognise anything rational in an elliptical expression being used for any of those years. On the other hand, with a cycle of sixty years actually in use, an elliptical method of designating years in excess of the number of sixty, in such a case as this one, is perfectly intelligible and admissible. And I entertain no doubt that that is the method which was adopted in recording the date of the present record. This record is, therefore, to be placed roughly about A.D. 874-75. The palæography of the record is quite in agreement with this result. And the result is also thoroughly in accordance with the date in A.D. 897, which is established by the praśasti of the Uttarapurâṇa for Lôkâditya, son of the Baṅkêya who is mentioned in this record.[2]
The question remains, whether this explanation places the record in actually the sixty-first year of Amôghavarsha I., or whether it places it in the sixty-first saṁvatsara counted from, and including, the saṁvatsara in which his reign commenced. The two things are not exactly the same ; because it happens that, in the period A.D. 814-15 to 877-78 covered by the reign of Amôghavarsha I., there was an apparent or an actual omission of a saṁvatsara . If the Ś.-S. 745 expired was the Subhakṛit saṁvatsara, No. 36, and the year Ś.-S. 746 expired was the Krôdhin saṁvatsara, No. 38, and there was an actual omission of the Sôbhana saṁvatsara, No.37. [3] If, on the other hand, they were taken according to the actual mean-sign system which underlay and governed the other system, then there was not an actual omission of that or any other saṁvatsara ; but each of the sixty saṁvatsaras ran its full course, and there was only an apparent omission of Śôbhana, No. 37, presenting itself in the fact that the first day of the year Ś.-S. 745 expired fell in Śubhakṛit, No. 36, while the first day of the year Ś.-S. 746 expired fell in Krôdhin, No. 38. It does not seem necessary to make calculations for the period A.D. 873 to 876, to determine the saṁvatsaras for those years according to the actual mean-sign system ; especially, as Professor Kielhorn has arrived at the conclusion that the system then in use was the so-called northern luni-solar system.[4] It seems sufficient to state the following results. We have seen, on page 205, that Amôghavarsha I. began to reign at some time from Âshâḍha śukla 1 of the Vijaya saṁvatsara, Śaka-Saṁvat 736 expired, falling in May or June, A.D. 814, to Jyaishṭha kṛishṇa 30 of the Jaya saṁvatsara, Ś.-S. 737 expired, falling in June, A.D. 815. The first saṁvatsara after a complete round of the saṁvatsaras would be again, either Vijaya, Ś.-S. 795 expired, beginning, according to the so-called northern luni-solar system, in A.D. 873 and ending in A.D. 874, or else Jaya, Ś.-S. 769 expired, beginning in A.D. 874 and ending in A.D. 875 ; and the record is to be placed in A.D. 873, 874, or 875. On the other hand, the actual sixty-first year of Amôghavarsha I. would commence on some day from Âshâḍha śukla 1 of the Jaya saṁvatsara, Śaka-Saṁvat 796 expired, in A.D. 874, to Jyaishṭha kṛishṇa 30 of the Manmatha saṁvatsara, Ś.-S. 797 expired, in A.D. 875 ; and the record is to be placed in A.D. 874, 875, or 876. A more exact result cannot be arrived at, because the month and tithi, with the week-day or any other detail, are not specified.
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