South Indian Inscriptions

KALACHURI OF TRIPURI

Gayākarna seems to have suffered another defeat at the hands of Ratnadēva II of Dakshina Kōsala. The latter belonged to an offshoot of the Kalachuri house of Dāhala. The early princes of this branch owed allegiance to the Kalachuri Emperors ruling at Tripurī and fought their battles. We have already seen that in his war against the king of Utkala (Orissa), Gāngēyadēva received valuable help from Kamalarāja of Tummāna.¹ Prithvīdēva I, the earliest prince of this branch whose inscriptions have been found in Chhattisgarh, does not claim in his Amōdā plates a higher title than Mahāmandalēśvara.² He was plainly a feudatory of the contemporary ruler of Dāhala. But his descendants began gradually to assert their independence. Jājalladēva I, the son of Prithvīdēva I, boasts in his inscription that the contemporary lord of Chēdi, who was Yaśahkarna, sought his friendship, and that the rulers of Kānyakubja and Jejābhukti honoured him with presents of wealth.³ The crushing defeat that Ratnadēva II, the son and successor of Jājalladēva I, inflicted on the mighty Ganga king Anantavarman Chōdaganga⁴ increased his power and prestige. He seems to have openly renounced subordination to Gayākarna. The latter sent a large force against him; but it suffered an ignominious defeat. In a Ratanpur inscription dated V. 1207 (1149-50 A.C.), Ratnadēva II is described as the fierce submarine fire to the matchless ocean of the arrayed and hard-to be-subdued hosts of the Chēdi king.⁵ The latter must have been no other than Gayākarna. ¹

It is difficult to state definitely the limits of Yaśahkarna’s reign. The earlier of his two grants seems to have been issued in K. 827.³ He must have been reigning then for about 3 years and, therefore, may have come to the throne in circa K. 824. The only date of his son and successor Gayākarna is K. 902. Gayākarna’s reign seems to have closed soon thereafter; for, in K. 907 he was dead and his son Narasimha was on the throne. So the period of about 80 years (K. 824 to K. 904) is covered by only two reigns. It seems probable that Yaśahkarna had a longer reign than his son, of whose achievements very little is known. He may, therefore, be

Gayākarna married Alhanadēvi, the daughter of Vijayasimha, the Guhila prince of Prāgvāta or Mevad and Śyāmaladēvī, who was herself the daughter of Udayāditya, the lord of the Mālava mandala.⁶ This alliance, which in a way united the royal families of the Kalachuris and the Paramāras, healed the sores of many generations. Alhanadēvī had two sons, Narasimha who succeeded his father, and Jayasimha who ‘like Lakshmana did marvellous service to his elder brother.’ Gayākarna’s spiritual preceptor was Śaktiśiva.⁷ As stated before, Gayākarna’s reign seems to have come to a close soon after K. 902 (1151 A.C.); for, when the Bhērā-Ghāt inscription was incised in K. 907, he was already dead and his son Narasimha was on the throne.

Only three inscriptions of the reign of Narasimha have been discovered so far. The aforementioned Bherā-Ghāt inscription, dated K. 907 (1155 A. C.), records the construction, by Alhanadēvī, of a temple of Śiva under the name Vaidyanātha together with a monastery, a hall of study and a row of gardens attached to it. She endowed the temple with the gift of two villages and placed it in charge of the Pāśupata ascetic Rudrarāśi. The other two inscriptions were discovered north of the Kaimur range-one⁸, dated K. 909 (1158 A.C.), at Lāl Pahād near Bharhut, and the other⁹, dated V. 1216 (1159 A.C.), near the foot of Alha-Ghāt, ‘which is one of the natural passes of the Vindhya hills by which the Tons river finds its way from the table land of Rewa to the plain of the Gangā.’ The former of these records the construction of a vaha or water-channel by one Ballāladēva, who was the son of an officer of Narasimha, while the second registers the erection of a temple of Ambikā and the construction of a ghāt by the Rānaka Chhīhula. The discovery of these lithic records north of the Kaimur range indicates that Narasimha succeeded in recovering from the Chandēllas a portion of his ancestral
__________________ ⁴

¹ Above, p. xc.
² No. 76, 1. 25.
³ No. 77, 11. 19-20.
⁴ No. 93, 1. 6; No. 97, 1. 4; No. 98, 1. 6.
⁵ No. 93, 1. 5.
⁶ No. 60, 11. 5 ff.
⁷ No. 64, 1. 10.
⁸ No. 61.
⁹ No. 62.