North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SILAHARAS OF KOLHAPUR

seem intended to show that the person who receives land by virtue of the grant is to enjoy it under the authority of the king as long as the sun and the moon endure.”

.. The characters are of the Nāgarī alphabet. The following peculiarities deserve notice. The left part of kh is fully developed (see khēchar-ēśvaraḥ, line 16), but it is half drawn in (khalu, line 11). In one place the writer has confused kh with śva, see śvadira, line 43 ; dh has developed a horn on the left, see vāra-vadhū, line 6 ; the subscript ṇ in the conjunct ṇṇ is shown in two ways ; see suvarṇṇa, line 20, and paurṇṇamāsyō, line 32 ; b is usually denoted by the sign for v, but in some cases it is shown by a separate sign resembling double v (see vibudha—, line 17, labdha, line 23 etc.) ; in writing conjuncts, the members are often interchanged (see kṛivtā, line 28 etc.)

.. The language is Sanskrit. The inscription is partly in verse and partly in prose. The first verse is in glorification of Garuḍa. This is followed by the genealogy of the Śilāhāra princes from Jatiga (1) to the reigning Śilāhāra king Gaṇḍarāditya in ten verses. Then comes the formal portion in prose in lines 19-45. Lastly come five benedictory and imprecatory verses, two more recording the names of the composer and the writer of the grant, and, finally, a verse expressing the hope that the charter would last for ever. The record is generally well composed, but the writer has committed several mistakes. The orthography shows the usual peculiarities of the reduplication of the consonant following r and the substitution, in most cases, of v for b.

..The inscription refers itself to the reign of the Śilāhāra prince, the Mahāmaṇḍalēśvara Gaṇḍarāditya, who had obtained the five mahāśabdas. He bears several birudas here such as ‘the lord of Tagara, the best of towns’, ‘having the Golden Eagle for his banner’, Maruvaṅka-sarpa (a serpent to the hostile army), Ayyanasiṅga (a lion-like son of his father), ‘a veritable Bhai- rava to hostile Māṇḍalikas’, ‘a lion to the elephants in the form of his foes’, Iḍuvarāditya (the Sun among archers), ‘Nārāyaṇa incarnate by his handsome form’, ‘Śanivāra-siddhi (one who is successful even on inauspicious days like Saturday)’, ‘a seizer of hill-forts’, ‘Vikramāditya in the Kali Age’ and ‘one who has obtained the favour of a boon from Mahālakshmī’. He is described as the ruler of the Miriñja country together with the seven khōllas and Kōṅkaṇa. At the time of the present grant he was encamped at the village of Tīravāḍa situated in Eḍēnāḍa. The record is dated Tuesday, the tenth tithi of the bright fortnight of Māgha in the expired year 1032 (expressed in words) by the era of the Śaka king, the cyclic year being Virōdhin. On this occasion he made certain gifts. In the following year (i.e. expired Śaka 1033) he made some more land-grants at the pāraṇā of the pañcha-lāṅgala vrata [1] on the occasion of a lunar eclipse on the full-moon tithi of Vaśākha, the cyclic year being Vikṛita. Both these dates can be shown to be quite regular. The Śaka years have, however, to be taken as current, not expired, notwithstanding the explicit statement that they had expired according to the era of the Śaka king. As Kielhorn has shown, the first date corresponds to Tuesday, the 1st February A.D. 1110, on which day the 10th tithi of the bright fortnight of Māgha ended 11 h. 58 m. after mean sunrise. The cyclic year was Virōdhin by the Southern luni-solar system. The second date corresponds to the 5th May A.D. 1110, when there was a lunar eclipse visible in India. The cyclic year was Vikṛita by southern luni-solar system, as stated in the grant.

..The inscription gives the following genealogy of the Kolhāpur branch of the Śilāhāras —Jatiga (I); his son Nāyivarman ; his son Chandra ; his son Jatiga (II) ; his son Gōṅka ; his brother Gūvala (I); his brother Kīrtirāja ; then Gōṅka’s son Mārasiṁha ; his son Gūvala (II) ; his younger brother Bhōjadēva (I); his brother Ballāla; and his younger brother Gaṇḍarāditya, who was reigning at the time of the present grant. The description of all these princes is quite conventional. The birudas assumed by Gaṇḍarāditya have been given above.

..The object of the present inscription is to record the grants made by Gaṇḍarāditya on
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[1] This consists in the donation of land together with five ploughs of hard wood and five others of gold, and ten bulls on a holy occasion such as an eclipse, Yugādi etc. See Matsyapurāṇa, Chapter 283.