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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA The language of the inscription is Sanskṛit poetry, with the exception of a few words in Sanskṛit prose in lines 1 and 77 f., and the alphabet is Nâgarî of the Vijayanagara type.[1] The very last word, śrî-Râmachaṁdra (l. 78), which stands for the signature, is in Telugu characters. The inscription records that Immaḍi-Nṛisiṁha (ll. 39 and 46 f.), son of Nṛisiṁharâya (ll. 22 f. and 46), granted to a Brâhmaṇa the village of Dêvulapalli (l. 67 f.) in the Mârjavâḍasîman[2] (l. 65) of the Penugoṇḍa-mahârâja[3] (l. 64). Dêvulapalli, which is identical with the modern village of that name in the Vâyalpâḍu tâluka of the Cuddapah district, is said, in the inscription, to have been situated within the limits of the village of Guṇḍlûru[4] (l. 65), south-east of Sûrinâyani-Mushṭûru (l. 66), and north of Aḍavi-Mushṭûru (l. 67). Mr. Krishnasvami Nayudu informs me that Sûrinâyani-Mushṭûru is now called Errakôṭapalli in the public accounts, while popularly it is known as Mushṭûru without any prefix, and that Aḍavi-Mushṭûru is now known as Kôna, though it is sometimes called also Kôna-Mushṭûru. He also tells me that Dêvulapalli is no longer an agrahâra. The plates have been borrowed from Dêvulapalli Veṅkaṭaramaṇappa, who is said to be a lineal descendant of the donee. It is said that the original name of the family was Vyâlapâṭi,[5] that it was given up in favour of Bollapini, which, in course of time, became corrupted into Gollapini, and that finally the family adopted the name of Dêvulapalli, which is the name of the village where it is living to this day.
The occasion for the grant was a lunar eclipse which occurred on Sunday, the full-moon tithi of Bhâdrapada in the cyclic year Raktâkshin and Śaka-Saṁvat 1427 (in numerical words) (v. 32 f.). This date corresponding to Sunday, the 25th August A.D. 1504, on which day there was a lunar eclipse.[6]
Historically the inscription is of great value, as it relates to a line of chiefs who exercised
considerable authority on the east coast of Southern India in the 15th century of the Christian
era, and one of whom, the donor’s father Nṛisiṁharâya, was the principal actor in the drama which
involved the overthrow of the first dynasty of the Karṇâṭa or Vijayanagara empire. Little or
nothing has been hitherto published concerning these chiefs, whom I would call Sâḷuva[7] chiefs.
I have compiled the following genealogy from the information furnished by this inscription and
by the Telugu poems Jaimini-Bhâratam and Varâhapurâṇam. The former book was dedicated
to Immaḍi-Nṛisiṁha’s father Nṛisiṁharâya, also called Narasiṅgarâya,[8] and the latter to Nṛisiṁharâya’s general Narasiṁha of the Tuḷu family, who afterwards became the founder of one of the
dynasties of the Vijayanagara empire. The Jaimini-Bhâratam has been printed, and my references are to the Madras edition of 1893. The Varâhapurâṇam has not been printed, but manuscript copies of it extant. I quote from a copy made for me from the manuscript available in
[1] [It deserves to be noted that the rare letter jha occurs in l. 50 ; that the aspiration of pha is expressed by
a book at the top of the line (ll. 4, 5 and 75) ; and that the virâma after t (ll. 17, 25, 30, 34, 38 and 75) and n (ll. 26,
29, 31, 44 and 70) is added to the right of the letter.─ E. H.] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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