South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE FEUDATORIES OF THE MAIN BRANCH

Nos. 20-21 : PLATES XX AND XXI
NACHNĒ-KĪ-TALĀĪ STONE INSCRIPTIONS OF VYĀGHRADEVA

...THESE two inscriptions were discovered by General Cunningham in 1883-84. He published his reading of the larger of them, together with facsimiles of both, in his Reports of the Archaeological Survey of India, Vol. XXI, pp. 97 f. They were next edited with facsimiles and a translation by Dr. Fleet in the Corpus Inscriptionusm Indicarum, Vol. III, pp. 233 f. They are edited here from the same facsimiles.

...The inscriptions are on a loose slab which was found lying on the ground outside the fort of Kuṭhārā near the village Nachnē-kī-talāī, about seven miles north-west of Jasō, the chief town of the former Jasō State, now included in Madhya Pradesh. Inscription No. 20 in incomplete and is engraved on one of the sides of the slab, while inscription No. 21 which is complete is on the face of it. The former inscription was left incomplete probably because that side of the stone was found too rough. The inscription was therefore commenced again and finished on what is now the front side of the slab.

...The writing of No. 20 covers a space of about 1’ 9^3/4” broad by 7^1/2” high; that of No. 21, about 1’ 9” broad by 1’ 1” high. In the centre of the larger inscription there is the figure of a wheel which Jayaswal took to be a characteristic symbol of the Vākāṭakas. The characters belong to the box-headed variety of the southern alphabets. There has been a great difference of opinion about the age of these inscriptions, which, as stated below, refer themselves to the reign of the Vākāṭaka Mahārāja Pṛithivīshēṇa. Dr. Fleet did not examine this question. Perhaps there was no need to do so as there was only one Vākāṭaka king of the name Pṛithivīshēṇa known when he edited these records. He naturally assigned them to Pṛithivīshēṇa I, mentioned in the grants of Pravarasēna II¹. The Bālāghāṭ plates which were discovered later have brought to notice another king of that name, viz., Pṛithivīshēṇa II, who was the fourth lineal descendant of Pṛithivīshēṇa I. Since then scholars have been sharply divided on the question of the identity of the Pṛithivīshēṇa during whose reign the present records were incised. Some of them such as Dr. Sukthankar², Dr. Jayaswal³ and Prof. H.C .Raychaudhuri⁴ thought that he was the first king of that name. Rao Bahadur K.N. Dikshit, however, pointed out that the characters of the Nachnā and Ganj inscriptions were later in date than those of the Poonā plates of Prabhāvatīguptā⁵. He therefore identified the Pṛithivīshēṇa of these inscriptions with Pṛithivīshēṇa II of the Bālāghāṭ plates. The same opinion has been expressed by Prof. Jouveau-Dubreuil⁶ and Dr. R.C. Majumdar⁷. Recently Dr. D.C. Sircar has reopened the question by pointing out that ‘the palaeographical peculiarities of the Nachnā and Ganj inscriptions are undoubtedly earlier than those of even the Bāsim plates of Vindyaśakti II, a grandson of Pravarasēna I⁸’. He has drawn pointed attention to the triangular form of
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¹ C.I.I., Vol. III, p. 233.
² Ep. Ind., Vol. XVII, p. 13.
³ History of India, etc., p. 73.
⁴ Political History of Ancient India, p. 541.
⁵ Ep. Ind., Vol. XVII, p. 362.
⁶ Ind. Ant., Vol. LV, pp. 103 f.
⁷ J.R.A.S.B., Vol. XII, pp. 1 f.
⁸ H.C.I.P., Vol. III, p. 179, n 1.