North Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SILAHARAS OF NORTH KONKAN

..The copper plates are three in number, each measuring 11” (27.94 cm.)Χ9”(22.68 cm) X 1/6” (.42 cm.) in size. The first and the last plate have writing on one side only, and the second plate on both the sides. Each plate has a hole ¾” (1.90 cm.) in diameter for the ring which held the plates together. The ring has a seal with the figure of Garuḍa. The seal has not, however, been published. The plates are now deposited in the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay.

.. The record consists of 94 lines, of which twenty-four are inscribed on the inner side of the first plate, twenty-three and twenty-four on the first and the second side of the second plate, and the remaining twenty-three on the inner side of the third plate, The characters are of the Nāgarī alphabet, closely resembling those of the preceding grant. The language is Sanskrit and the record is written partly in verse and partly in prose, like other grants of the Early Śilāhāras. The orthography shows the usual substitution of the dental for the palatal sibilant and the reduplication of the consonant following r.

.. The eulogistic portion of the grant has the same number of verses and those too in the same order as in the preceding grant. The inscription refers itself to the reign of the Śilāhāra King Mummuṇirāja. His genealogy is traced from the mythical Jīmūtavāhana, the first historical king being Kapardin I. Mummuṇirāja beras the same titles as in the preceding grant. So this grant makes no addition to our historical knowledge of the Śilāhāra dynasty.

.. The object of the present inscription is to record the grant, by Mammuṇirāja, of the village Ki-ichchhitā situated in the vishaya Mandaraja to twelve Brāhmaṇas residing in the agrahāra of Brahmapurī founded by Daddapaiya, the Mahāmātya of Mummuṇirāja. The donated village was bounded on the east by the boundary of the village Pāṇīvāḍa of the Śrī-Nēra hill, on the north by the boundary of the village Nīmbā, on the west by the village Mātara, and on the south by the river Sāmbina. The revenue of the village amounted to 1500 drammas. The purpose of the grant was to provide for the performance of the religious rites and the usual pañcha-mahā-yajñas, viz. bali, charu, Agnihōtra and so forth. The recipients of the gift had originally hailed from different places such as Gauḍa, Muñjasthāna in Madhyadēśa and Bhṛigukachchha in the Lāṭa-dēśa.

.. The grant was made on the occasion of a lunar eclipse which occurred on the fifteenth tithi of the bright fortnight of Bhādrapada in the Śaka year 971 (stated both in words and figures), the cyclic year being Virōdhin. The week-day is also mentioned in line 57, but its reading is uncertain. Upadhyaya read it as Śukrē, but the second syllable in that case, will have to be regarded as incompletely formed. See the form of krē in chakrē in line 17. The recorded tithi in the Śaka year 971 corresponds to the 15th August A.D. 1049, when there was a lunar eclipse as stated in the grant. The cyclic year, according to the southern system, was also Virōdhin as required. But the week-day was Tuesday, not Friday as read by Upadhyaya. To get over the difficulty Dr. N. P. Chakravarti suggested the reading sutē and took it mean ‘the son of the Earth’ i.e., Maṅgala (Tuesday). This does not appear convineing, as suta by itself is nowhere used in the sense of Tuesday. The date thus appears to be irregular. If we take the Śaka year 971 as current (i.e. corresponding to Śaka 970 expired), the date would be regular. In the Śaka year 970 expired, the fifteenth tithi of the bright fortnight of Bhādrapada fell on a Friday (the 26th August A.D. 1048), when also there was a lunar eclipse as stated in the present grant. But the cyclic year was Sarvadhārin, not Virōdhin as required. As the cyclic year Virōdhin is explicitly stated in the grant, this second equivalent of the date is not possible. We must, therefore, suppose that the grant was made on Tuesday, Bhādrapada śu. di. 15, in the Śaka year 971, the cyclic year being Virōdhin, but was actually recorded three days later on Friday. The corresponding Christian date of the grant is, therefore, the 15th August A.D. 1049.