Annual Reports

INTRODUCTION

Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy for the year 1952-53

  During the year under review a total number of 620 inscriptions in the Sanskritic and Dravidian languages, noticed in Appendices A and B, were examined. Of them 42 are on copper plates and 578 on stone and other materials including brick, wood, gold and silver vessels or ornaments, and coins. Impressions of the majority of the stone inscriptions were collected by this office while photographs, etc., of some were received from the circle offices, museums and private persons as well as from foreign countries. Notices of as many as 46 coins, examined during the period, have been included in appendix B. Appendix C contains notices of 160 Persian and Arabic inscriptions, a few of which contain a counterpart in the indigenous script and language.

COPPER PLATES

  The earliest among the copper-plate charters noticed is a set of five plates (No. 14) discovered near the village of Penugoṇḍa in the Tanuku Taluk, West Godavari District, Madras State. It belongs to the reign of Mahārāja Hastivarman and is engraved in archaic characters of the Southern variety assignable to about the 4th or 5th century A.D. The record is couched in the Prakrit language with an admixture of Sanskrit words. The charter was issued from the victorious Jayapura and records that king Hatthivamma (Hastivarman) granted the village Mulukuli in Kānīr-āhāra to a number of Brāhmaṇas well-versed in the Vēdas, Vēdāṅgas, etc. There is no mention in the record of the family to which the donor belonged. But the name of the king reminds us of two rulers of the Śālaṅkāyana dynasty, who ruled about this period, bore the name Hastivarman and were related to each other as grandfather and grandson (Ancient India, No. 5, 1949, p. 46). If Hastivarman of the present charter is considered to be a price of this line, the record would be the first known document issued by either of the Hastivarmans of the Śālaṅkāyana family. Like the charters of the Śālaṅkāyana kings, this also cites the regnal year of the king. In the enumeration of the details of its date, the present charter, however, differs from the Śālaṅkāyana records. Unlike the charters of this period which invariably cite the day of the fortnight in a particular season, the present record quotes the kāl-āshṭamī tithi (i. e. the 8th of the dark fortnight) of the month of Jyēshṭha and the Bhādrapada nakshatra. The practice of citing the nakshatra is noteworthy although we have a few earlier instances in records especially of the northwest. The inscription is attested at the end by Amātya Jayasvāmin. The known Śālaṅkāyana charters mention Vēṅgī or Vēṅgīpura as the place of issue. But the record under study refers to its issue from Jayapura. The name of Kānīr-āhāra, the territorial division in which the gift village was situated, may possibly be traced in that of the village Kānūru, about 15 miles due north of Penugoṇḍa, the findspot of the charter. The identity of Mulukuli, the gift village, is uncertain. The prathama-kalyāṇa of the king is stated to have marked the occasion for the gift. The meaning of this expression cannot be definitely determined.

   Next in point of time is No. 6 from Urjām in the Srikakulam Taluk, Srikakulam District, Madras State. It is a set of three plates issued from Kaliṅganagara by the Eastern Gaṅga king Indravarman. The charter is dated in the year 97, apparently of the Gaṅga era, and records a gift of land in Hōñjēri-grāma, situated in the territorial division of Krōshṭukavarttanī, to Mātṛichandraśarman, a Brāhmaṇa of the Vatsa gōtra, on the occasion of the full-moon day of MahāKārttika. King Indravarman of this record, who bears the surname Rājasiṁha, is already known to us from several of his records, the latest among which is the Parlakimeḍi plates (Ind. Ant., XVI, pp. 131 ff.) dated in the year 91. The present