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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR AMODA PLATES OF JAJALLADEVA II : YEAR 91[9] made the present grant. Rai Bahadur Hiralal who read the name as Dhīrū¹ took the description to be figurative and saw in it a reference to the rebellion of a local aboriginal chief, in which Jājalladēva was reduced to a precarious position². It is difficult to say how far this is correct; for there is no reference to such a rebellion in any other record of the Kalachuris of Ratanpur³ and the possibility of the king being caught by an alligator of the species locally known as Thīrū is not altogether precluded. The donees, to whom the present grant was made, were the astrologer Rāghava and the family-priest Nāmadēva. The former was the son of a great astrologer named Dāmōdara, the son of Pṛithvīdhara, and belonged to the [Sāva]rṇa gōtra with the five pravaras Vatsa, Bhārgava, Chyavana, Āpnavana and Aurva. Dāmōdara is described as the best of Sāman-singers, whose feet were worshipped by princes, and seems to be identical with the Paṇḍita Dāmōdara, whose stone image was discovered by Rai Bahadur Hiralal and is now placed in the Lakhaṇēśvara temple at Kharōd near Shēorinārāyaṇ. The other donee Nāmadēva was the son of Parāśara who was himself the son of Mahādhana of the Bhāradvāja gōtra with the three pravaras Bhāradvāja, Āṅgirasa and Bārhaspatya. The grant was written on the plates by Dharmarāja, the son of Vatsarāja of the Vāstavya family, who owned the village Jaṇḍēra. Vatsarāja, it may be noted, was the writer of the two grants of Pṛithvīdēva II, the father of Jājalladēva II.
The inscription is dated on Friday, the fifth tithi of the dark fortnight of Agraṇa. The year was denoted by three numerical figures, of which the first two are clearly 9 and 1, but the third is almost completely lost by corrosion. Rai Bahadur Hiralal thought that the bottom bend of the damaged figure indicated that it could not but be 2 or 3. Though no era is specified, there is no doubt that the date must be referred to the Kalachuri era. The fifth tithi of the dark fortnight of Āgrahāyaṇa or Mārgaśīrsha did not, however, fall on Friday in either K. 912 or K. 913, while the tithi of the same fortnight fell on Friday in the month of Śrāvaṇa in K.912. R.B. Hiralal, therefore, conjectured that the writer must have wrongly written Agraṇa for Śrāvaṇa and took the date to be Friday, the fifth tithi of the dark fortnight of Śrāvaṇa in the Kalachuri year 912, the corresponding Christian date being the 14th July 1161 A.C.⁴My examination of the original plate has convinced me that the third figure is almost completely lost, leaving no clear traces behind. It could have been neither 2 nor 3; for from the Ratanpur inscription of Brahmadēva⁵ we learn that Pṛithvīdēva II, the father of Jājalladēva II, was ruling till K. 915. Jājalladēva II, therefore, could not have been on the throne in either K. 912 or K. 913. We have, of course, to conjecture the third figure of the date from the specification of the tithi and the week-day. As the first two figures are undoubtedly 9 and 1, we have to see in which of the years between K.915 and K. 919, the fifth tithi of the dark fortnight of Āgrahāyaṇa⁶ fell on a Friday. As Kielhorn has shown, the months of the Kalachuri year were Pūrṇimānta. Now, the fifth tithi of the dark fortnight of the pūrṇimānta 1The reading is undoubtedly Thīrū. See below, p. 532, n.3.
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