North Indian Inscriptions

RELIGIOUS CONDITION

of religious rites and his images were carved on the outside of the walls of the temples of Śiva such as that at Ambaranāth, but temples were rarely dedicated to him. One such was erected at Brahmapurī on the outskirts of Kolhāpur by Maillapayya, the Kaḍitāmātya (Accounts Officer) of Gaṇḍarāditya, when he repaired the temple of Khēḍāditya there.[1] The Sun had more devotees. Śilāhāra inscriptions from North Koṅkaṇ invariably mention that the kings worshipped him before making any grants to gods and Brāhmāṇas. References to his temples occur in some records. There was a temple of Lōṇāditya at Lavaṇētaṭa (modern Lonāḍ, south-west of Bhivaṇḍī), to which the Śilāhāra king Aparājita made a land-grant.[2] At the aforementioned Brahmapurī, a suburb of Kolhāpur, there was an old temple of Khēḍāditya (the Sun). Maillapayya, the afore-named Amātya of Gaṇḍarāditya, while repairing it, added to it two other shrines of Brahmā and Vishṇu, and requested the king to make a grant to keep the three-spired temple in good repair.[3]

.. Some temples of goddesses are also mentioned in Śilāhāra inscriptions. The most famous of them was the temple of Mahālakshmī at Kolhāpur. Who constructed it is not known definitely; but the goddess had become well-known before the ninth century A.D.; for the Rāshṭrakūṭa king Amōghavarsha I is said to have offered her a finger of his left hand to ward off a public calamity.[4] Her temple is a star-shaped triple shrine, with Mahālakshmī in the central garbhagṛiha, and Mahākālī and Mahāsarasvatī in the shrine to her right and left respectively. The present temple may have been constructed by one of the Sinda kings who was ruling at Karahāṭa (modern Karhāḍ) before the Śilāhāras conquered the Kolhāpur country

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as shown before.[5] It had already become famous as a well-known Śakta-pīṭha. These Śilahāras were her fervent devotees. They believed that they had obtained their kingdom by her grace; for they state in their grants that they had secured her gracious boon.[6] The goddess Bhagavatī at Saṁyāna (modern Sañjān in the Ṭhāṇā District) seems to have been well-known in that age. Copper-plate grants made to her in the reigns of the Arab feudatories of the Rāshṭrakūṭas[7] and the Māṇḍalika Chāmuṇḍarāja, who owed allegiance to the Northern Śilāhāras,[8] have been discovered recently. The goddess Jōgēśvarī is mentioned in the Cintra stone inscription which seems to have originally belonged to a place named after her in the Sāshṭī island.[9] Padmāvatī, a Śāsana-devatā of the Jaina faith, is mentioned in a record of the reign of Vijayāditya.[10]

.. As the Śilāhāras of North and South Koṅkaṇ were ardent Śaivas, they invited Śaiva ascetics to their capital even from distant places, and made liberal grants to them. It is interesting to note that Ātrēya, who received the grant recorded in the Khārepāṭaṇ plates dated Śaka 930 of the Śilāhāra king Raṭṭarāja, was a disciple of the learned Śaiva ascetic Ambhōjaśambhu, who belonged to the Karkarōṇī branch of the Mattamayūra clan.[11] Karkarōṇī has not yet been identified, but it seems to have been situated somewhere in Central India. The Mattamayūra clan, of which it was a branch, took its named from the capital of the Chaulukya kings who flourished in Central India in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A.D. This place has not
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[1] No. 48, line 26. Cousens has noticed an unfinished image of Brahmā found at Sopārā. M.T,D., p. 20.
[2] No. 7, line 62.
[3] No. 48, line 25.
[4] Ep. Ind., Vol. XVIII, p. 248.
[5] Above, p. xxvi.
[6] See e.g. No. 48, line 20.
[7] Ep. Ind., Vol. XXXII, pp. 45 f.
[8] No. 12, line 17.
[9] No. 21, line 14.
[10] No. 49, line 9.
[11] No. 14, line 53.

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