South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

eraḍaneya varisada Chaitra-mâsa . . , “ [of] the month Chaitra of the year . . . . . . hundred and twenty-two,” and there is nothing whatever to fix us to the year 822.

(3) An inscription at Hirêmagaḷûr in the Kaḍûr district, Ep. Carn. Vol. VI., Cm. 8. This is a record of a Nîti[mârga], whose personal name is not mentioned in it, but who, we are supposed to learn from it (see the translation, p. 36), had the biruda Jayadutta[raṁga]. It does not present any date at all.

(4) An inscription at Añchavâḍi in the Mysore district, Ep. Carn. Vol. IV., Ch. 134. This record is dated, without any mention of the Śaka year, in the first year of the crowing of a Nîtimârga whose personal name is not mentioned in it.

(5) An inscription at Gaṭṭavâḍi in the Mysore district, Ep. Carn. Vol. III., Nj. 97. This record, however, is dated in the fifth year of the crowing, not of a Nîtimârga, but of a Satyavâkya. And it does not include any mention either of a Nîtimârga, or of a Râchamalla, or of the Śaka year.

(6) Another inscription at Gaṭṭavâḍi, on the back of the same stone, Ep. Carn. Vol. III., Nj. 98, which is dated, without any mention of the Śaka year, in the fifth year of the crowning of a Nîtimârga whose personal name is not mentioned in it.

(7) An inscription at Kûligere in the Mysore district, Ep. Carn. Vol. III., MI. 30. This record refers itself to the time of a Nîtimârga whose personal name is not mentioned in it. And it is dated in the Śaka year 831 (expired), = A.D. 909-910.

(8) The inscription at Doḍḍahuṇḍi in the Mysore district, Ep. Carn. Vol. III., TN. 91 ; edited by me in Vol. VI. above, p. 43. This record commemorates the death of a Nîtimârga whose personal name is not mentioned in it, and speaks of his eldest son Satyavâkya, whose personal name, also, is not mentioned. It does not present any date at all.

And Mr. Rice has thus arrived at “ ? 899 A.D.” as the date of this Chikmagaḷûr record ; see Ep. Carn. Vol. VI. Classified List, p. 1, and translations, p. 35.

Mr. Rice’s arrangement, however, will not stand the test of examination. In the first place, from his incongruous grouping we have to dismiss the first Gaṭṭavâḍi inscription (5). As remarked above, it is a record, not of a Nîtimârga at all, but of a Satyavâkya. And it does not help in any way in connection with the Chikmagaḷûr inscription.

In the second place, we must dismiss the Doḍḍahuṇḍi inscription (8). This record is shewn by a palæographic detail to be appreciably earlier than A.D. 899. And, as has been explained by me in Vol. VI. above, p. 43, it is to be placed roughly about A.D. 840, and the Nîtimârga of it is Raṇavikrama, son of Śrîpurusha-Muttarasa.

And we must further dismiss the other inscription at Gaṭṭavâḍi (6). This can only be a record of Nîtimârga-Ereyappa, to whom I have already referred it (Vol. VI. above, p. 70), falling probably in A.D. 912-13.

We need not give any attention to the Gañjigere inscription (1) and the Añchavâḍi inscription (4). There records do not throw any light on the date of the Chikmagaḷûr record. And there is nothing at present to identify the prince or prices mentioned as Nîtimârga in them, or to enable us to refer them to any particular period ; as in the case of many other records, nothing can be done with them until we have facsimiles or ink-impressions of them, unless perhaps an index, when we have one, of all the miscellaneous proper names mentioned in the records of the Western Gaṅga series, may furnish any clues.

The Kûligere inscription (7) does certainly give a date for a Nîtimârga in A.D. 909-910. But it does not contain anything tending to identify that Nîtimârga with the Nîtimârga