North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF RATANPUR

looped or hooked end, turned in opposite directions and placed one below the other;^¹ see, e. g., iti in 11.9 and 16 and iha in 1.20. Pṛishṭhamātrās are generally used to denote medial diphthongs. The sign of v is generally used to denote b except in the forms babhūvur- and -babhūva, 11. 7 and 21 and the conjunct bdha of -labdhā- in 1.17. The language is Sanskrit. Except for ōṁ namō Vrahmaṇē in the beginning, the record is metrically composed throughout. There are 35 verses, all of which are numbered. Of these, verses 1-3, 5-7 and 9, which bring the royal genealogy down to Pṛithvīdēva I, occur in the earlier Amōdā plates of Pṛithvīdēva I. Some of the benedictive and imprecatory verses, again, are common to the two records. In respect of orthography we may notice that the dental s and the palatal ś are confused, see, e.g., sahaśrēṇa for sahaśrēṇa, 1.33, and that y is used for j in Vāyapēya, 1.33 and possibly in Yāmvavat=², 1.18, and and vice versa in jātē, 1. 23.

The inscription refers itself to the reign of Ratnadēva II of the Kalachuri Dynasty of Ratanpur. The object of it is to record the royal grant of the village Chiñchātalāī situated in the maṇḍala of Anarghavallī to a Brāhmaṇa named Padmanābha, on the occasion of a lunar eclipse. The record was written on the plates by Kīrtidhara,^³ the owner of the village Jaṇḍēra in the same maṇḍala of Anarghavallī.

The genealogy of Ratnadēva II down to his grand-father Pṛithvīdēva I is given here as in the latter's Amōdā plates, most of the verses descriptive of the kings being identical in both the records.^⁴The inscription then mentions Jājalladēva I , the son of Pṛithvīdēva I and Rājalladēvī and his son and successor Ratnadēva II, who made the present grant. The description of these princes also is merely conventional.

The pedigree of the donee Padmanābha begins in v. 11. His great-grandfather Mahasōṇa, a Brāhmaṇa of the Vatsa gōtra and five pravaras,^⁵ hailed from Sōṇabhadra in Madhyadēśa (Middle Country). He had mastered all the Vēdas and Āgamas as well as the six Śāstras. He observed a fast unto death for fifty days at the holy place (tīrtha) Jāmbavat.^⁶ His son was Sōmeśvara, who had a son named Kulachandra. The latter's son was Padmanābha. He was proficient in astrology and knew two Siddhāntas.^⁷ In the presence of all astronomers in the assembly of Ratnadēva II, Padmanābha asserted that there would be a total lunar eclipse when three quarters of the night had passed and the moon was in the asterism Rōhiṇī on Thursday, the paurṇimā (fifteenth tithi of the bright fortnight) of Kārttika in the expired year 880. When the eclipse occurred at the predicted time, the king became pleased and donated the aforementioned village Chiñchātalāī to Padmanābha.

The foregoing particulars of the occasion on which the present grant was made clearly show that the other astronomers of Ratnadēva's court were using older methods of astronomical calculations. Their predictions of eclipses were not accurate and did not therefore come true. Padmanābha appears to have discovered the mistakes in their methods and making the necessary bīja-saṁskāras, correctly calculated the time of the particular lunar
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¹ The same form of i occurs iśa-in line 40 of the Amōdā plates of Pṛithvīdēva I, No. 76, above, p. 407.
² See below, text, p. 427, n. 1.
³ He may be identical with the writer of the Ratanpur stone inscription of Jājalladēva. See above, p. 411, n. 2.
⁴ The verses descriptive of Kōkkala and Ratnarāja I are different. Those which occur here are repeated in the later records of the dynasty.
⁵These are not specified here. In the Amōdā plates of Jājalladēva II (below, No. 99, 1. 21), they are mentioned as Vatsa, Bhārgava, Chyavana., Āpnavāna and Aurva.
⁶See below , text p. 427, n. 1.
⁷These were probably the Sūrya-siddhānta and the Brahmagupta-siddhānta.