North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR

1.7; ś in śasinō=, 11.3-4 and yaśo-ti,-11.17-18 ; s in śūnur=, 1.9 and -saṁślēsha-, 1.6. The sign of avagraha occurs in 11.4 and 20. The language is Sanskrit. Except for ōṁ namō Vrahmaṇē in the beginning and the date at the end, the record is in verse throughout. In respect of orthography it may be noted that the consonant following r is doubled in a few places, e. g., in Kārttavīryō=1.4; the dental s is used for the palatal ś in śasi-, 1.3; =Dasāsyam, 1.6, Parāsara-, 1.15 etc.; the dental n is employed for the lingual ṇ in punya-, 11.17and 21 and pratigrīknāti, 1.20, and vra written for mra in tāvraṁ, 1.22

The inscription refers itself to the reign of Ratnadēva II of the Kalachuri Dynasty of Ratanpur. The object of it is to record the grant, by Ratnadēva II, of the village Tiṇērī, situated in the vishaya of Anarghavallī, on the occasion of a lunar eclipse. The donee was Nārāyaṇaśarman, the son of Tribhuvanapāla and son's son of Śīlāditya, who was a student of the Sāmavēda and belonged to the Parāśara gōtra with the three pravaras, Vasisṭha Śakti and Parāśara

The genealogy of Ratnadēva II down to his father Jājalladēva (I) is given here as in the latter's Ratanpur stone inscription.^¹ It may, however, be noted that the relation of Kaliṅgarāja to a younger son of Kōkalla I, who is called here 'the lord of Vaṅkō-Tummāṇa' is not explicitly stated in the present record, but from the manner in which his name is introduced he seems to be referred to as his son. Jājalladēva's victory over a king named Bala is alluded to by means of a double entendre in verse 8. This Bala is clearly Bhujabala, the lord of Suvarṇapura, whose defeat by Jājalladēva I is explicitly mentioned in the Kharōd stone inscription^² of K. 933.

The inscription is dated in the year 878 (expressed by decimal figures only) on the 5th tithi of the bright fortnight of Bhādra (i.e., Bhādrapada), on Sunday. According to the epoch of 247-48 A.C. this date regularly corresponds, for the expired Kalachuri year 878, to Sunday, the 14th August 1127 A.C. On that day the aforementioned tithi ended 8 h. 50 m. after mean sunrise. The date of the present inscription, like that of the Rewa stone inscription of Malayasiṁha,^³ clearly show that with the epoch of 247-48 A.C., the Kalachuri year could not have commenced on Bhādrapada śu. di. I as was once supposed by Dr. Kielhorn.⁴

As stated before, the grant recorded in the present inscription was made on the occasion of a lunar eclipse. The nearest lunar eclipse which occurred before the aforementioned date is the one which rook place on the full-moon day of Jyēshṭha, the corresponding Christian date being the 27th May 1127 A.C.^⁵ The grant was, therefore, reduced to writing more than two months after it was made.

Of the place-names mentioned in this record, Tripurī has already been identified. Vaṅkō-Tummāṇa is identical with Tumān in the Bilaspur District as shown before. The place was so called on account of the well-known shrine of the god Vaṅkēśvara which is mentioned in other records also. Anarghavallī probably corresponds to the modern Jānjgir tahsil, though no place of that name can now be traced in it. Tiṇērī, the donated village, also cannot now be identified.
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¹ Above No. 77.
² Below, No. 100, 1.6.
³ Above, No. 67.
⁴ Ind. Ant., Vol. XVII, p. 215.
⁵ It is not necessary to identify the lunar eclipse with that which occurred as far back as the 10th January 1126 A.C. as is done by Hiralal. (See his Inscriptions in C.P. and Berar, second ed. p. 128). It is also not necessary to suppose with him that 'a lunar eclipse was a greater importance to a scion of the lunar dynasty than a solar one'.