South Indian Inscriptions

EPIGRAPHIA INDICA

The donor Bhairava II. belonged to the lunar race (v. 5 and l. 11), to the Kâśyapa-gôtra (l. 11) and to the family of Jinadatta or Jinadattarâya (ll. 6 and 12) and was the son of Gummaṭâmbâ (ll. 6 and 13) and of Vîra-Narasiṁha-Vaṅganarêndra (l. 13).^[1] Gummaṭâmbâ was the sister of Bhairava I. (v. 5), the son of Honnamâmbikâ (l. 12). Some of the titles of Bhairava II. were : (1) arirâya-gaṇḍara-ḍâvaṇi, (2) ‘ the lord of Paṭṭi-Pombuchcha the best of cities,’ and (3) ‘ he who has obtained excellent boons from (the goddess) Padmâvatî of Pombuchcha.’ The second and third of these, coupled with his professed descent from Jinadatta, connect Bhairava II. with the Śântara chiefs if Pombuchcha, who also traced their ancestry to Jinadatta and were worshipers of the goddess Padmâvati of Pombuchcha.^[2] Mr. Rice in the Introduction to Vols. VI. and VII. of his Epigraphia Carnatica mentions a number of records which he assigns to the early members of the Śântara family,^[3] most of whom, as stated therein, were feudatories of the Râshṭrakûṭas and were ruling the Sântaḷige conntry.^[4] Pombuchcha, the capital of the Śântaras, is spelt in early records as Pombulcha or Paṭṭi-Pombuchchapura and is identical with the modern Humcha or Hombucha in the Nagar tâluka of the Shimoga district ; it is mentioned in connection with the Śântaras even in their earliest records. The alleged descent of the Śântaras from Jinadattarâya, the mythical founder of the line of Jaina kings in the south, is not warranted by any of these earlier inscriptions. A long account of the Śântaras which connects them with Jinadatta, first appears in a record of A.D. 1077 at Humcha itself.^[5] The Baligâmi record of A.D. 1149^[6] makes no reference whatever to the mythical Śântaras ; the stone inscription from Punêdahaḷli^[7] dated in A.D. 1287, connects Jinadatta with the Châḷukya family. In any case the
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^[1] In No. 993 of Professor Kielhorn’s List of Southern Inscr., which deals with the date of this record, Chaṅganarêndra has to be corrected into Vaṅganarêndra, and the title ‘ supreme lord of Paṭṭi-Pombuchcha-para ’ there applied to Bhairava I. should, according to the present interpretation of the passage, be transferred to his son Bhairava II.
^[2] See below, note 5.
^[3] The Śântaras of Pombuchcha and the Kadambas of the western coast appear from these record to have been related to each other in some unexplained way. This fact is cleared up in one of the later Śântara inscriptions at Baḷagâmi, which states that the Sântara chief Jagaddêva, who was feudatory of the Western Châlukya Jagadêkamalla II., and the Kadamba chief Jayakêśin, who was the son of Vijayâdityadêva, were sons of two uterine sisters (Dr. Fleet’s Dyn. Kan. Distr. p. 458 and note 2). The Âḷupas of the western coast, some of whose early inscriptions are found at Udiyâvara near Uḍipi, may have had some connection with Pombulcha, since in two unpublished inscriptions from that village (Nos. 97 and 98 of the Government Epigraphist’s collection for 1901) Pombulcha and Udayâpura (i.e. Udiyâvara) are mentioned together with reference to certain tolls and nakaras (trading classes ?) of the two places ; another (No. 108 of the same collection) states that Śvâtavâhana, who was the lord of Paṭṭi (Paṭṭi oḍeyôn=), (i.e. Paṭṭi-râjya, the province of which Humcha was the capital), fell in battle while entering (i.e. capturing) Udavapura ; and Mr. Rice’s Ep. Carn Vol. VI. Kp. 37 refers to the reign of Chitravâhana, evidently an Âḷupa king, over Ponbuchcha.
^[4] The exact position of this territorial division is not fixed. Dr. Fleet places it somewhere west of the Mysore State (Dyn. Kan. Distr. p. 306), and Mr. Rice states that it corresponds with the present Tîrthahaḷḷi tâluka of the Shimoga district (Ep. Carn. Vol. VII. Introduction, p. 17). As however Humcha in the Nagar tâluka was the capital of the Śântara chiefs who were ruling over the Sântaḷige one-thousand country, as the earlier Śântara records found in the Shikarpur tâluka of the Shimoga district mention certain villages of this tâluka as belonging to the Sântaḷige country, and as Sêtuvinabîdu or Sêtu, the capital of the Śântara chief Jagaddêva in A.D. 1149, ‘ would be located by Mr. Rice somewhere in Canara ’ (Dyn. Kan. Distr. p. 458, note 1), it may be assumed that Sântaḷige included the western portion of the Shimoga district, i.e. the Shikarpur, Nagar and Tîrthahaḷḷi tâlukas, and probably also a portion of the South Canara district.
^[5] Ep. Carn. Vol. VIII. No. 35. This record makes Jinadatta a member of the family of Ugra-vaṁśa and the hereditary lord of Uttara-Madnurâ. It gives also the story of the goddess Padmâvatî, who being pleased with Jinadatta’s prowess, built for him the city of Pomburcha or Kanakapura. One of his descendants, Vikrama-Śântara, is stared to have fixed the boundaries of the Sântaḷige thousand province (J. R. A. S. for April 1905, pp. 295 and 298).
^[6] No. 32 of the Government Epigraphist’s collection for 1892.
^[7] Ep. Carn. Vol. VII. Sk. 312.