South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE MAIN BRANCH

the place of issue may have been the royal capital Pravarapura. The grant has been very carelessly drafted. The writer has, again, committed mistakes in omitting some words and afterwards writing them in wrong places¹. In one case he has substituted the name of a Brāhmaṇa for that of the village granted². All this has made the task of interpretation very difficult. It seems, however, clear that the object of the present inscription was to record the grant of a village (the name of which is unfortunately lost owing to the writer’s carelessness) which lay in the mārga of Gēpuraka, to the north of Ārāmaka, to the east of Kobidārikā, to the south of Kōśambaka and to the west of Añjanavāṭaka. In line 11 Pravarasēna II says that he made the grant for augmenting his religious merit, life, power and royal fortune as well as for his well-being in this world and the next. Line 20 read with line 13, however, states that a half of the vāṭaka (village) was purchased and donated to the Brāhmaṇas by the merchant Chandra near the foot-prints (Pāda-mūla) of the Bhagavat, who was probably the same as the Lord of Rāmagiri mentioned in the Ṛiddhapur plates. In line 17 Pravarasēna II says that he has recorded the gift in a charter as it has been previously made³ and still he says further that the village has been granted to the Brāhmaṇas as a fresh gift with the pouring out of water⁴. The only way in which we can reconcile these conflicting statements is to suppose that the merchant Chandra purchased a half of the particular village and donated it to certain Brāhmaṇas and requested the king to confirm the gift and to issue a charter in that behalf. The king seems to have given the other half of the village for his own religious merit etc. The donees were the Brāhmaṇa Gōṇḍārya, the son of Viśākhārya, who was residing at Ārāmaka, and his six sons⁵ Manōrathārya, Gōvārya, Dēvārya, Bāppārya, Kumārārya and Drōṇārya. They belonged to the VājiKauśika gōtra. The grant is dated on the fifth tithi of the dark fortnight of Vaiśākha in the twenty-third year evidently of the reign of Pravarasena II. The order was communicated by the king personally. The grant was written by the Rājuka Koṭṭadēva

... The mention of the officer Rajuka as the writer of the grant is interesting. The officer Rājuka, as he is named elsewhere, is first noticed in the inscriptions of Āśōka. He was a high officer placed in charge of many hundred thousands of men and could at his discretion inflict punishment or confer a reward. The term is derived from rajjū meaning a rope and originally signified a settlement officer who measured lands for the assessment of land-tax. The Rajjuka is also mentioned in an inscription of Chuṭukulānanda Sātakarṇi⁶. He is rarely noticed thereafter. His mention in the present grant shows that the term
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¹ The words mula datām-iti at the end of line 13, which the Editor of the Ep. Ind. considered unintelligible, are connected in sense with Bhagavat-pāda- at the end of line 20. They should have been written at the bottom of the first side of the third plate. The writer committed a mistake in writing them at the bottom of the second side of the second plate. It will thus be seen that the merchant Chandra did not purchase half of any field from the Brahmanas as supposed by Bose, but donated A half of the Village to them near the footprints of the Bhagavat. From the boundaried given in the record it appears clear thet the whole village, not a field in it, was granted by the King.
² The writer mentions Viśākhāryavāṭaka as a village in line 14. Visākhārya was, however, the name of a Brāhmaṇa who was the father of Gūṇḍārya, one of the donees of this grant. While copying the record from the bhūrjapatra, the wrtiter’s eye seems to have skipped over the proper name of the village, in place of which he wrote .Viśākhārya occurring in the next line. Strange as it may seem, the mistake remained uncorrected.
³ Notice pu[r]vva-dattā iti kṛitvā.. asmābhi[ḥ] śāsana-nibandhaḥ kṛitaḥ in lines 18.
⁴ Notice a-pūrvv-dattā(ttyā) udaka-pūrvvam-atistṛishṭaḥ in line 18. ⁵ Thought the expression Gōṇḍārya-putra is grammatically connected with only Manōrathāryāya. it is probably intended to be connected with the following names also.
⁶ Ep. Carn., Vol. VII, p. 251.