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The Indian Analyst
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Annual Reports |
CHOLAS OF THE RENANDU COUNTRY AND VAIDUMBAS. to Chōḷa, after whom in course of time came Karikāla. In his lineage was born Sundarananda who was succeeded by Navarāma. The subsequent kings were Ereyamma, Vijayakāma, Vīrārjuna, Agraṇipiḍugu, Kōkili, Mahēndravarman, Eḷamjōḷa, Nṛipakāma and Divākara, after whom came Śrīkaṇṭha, the king of our grant. Srīkaṇṭha is stated to have acquired victory in battles. Whether this suggests that he attained his throne by vanquishing rival claimants or merely refers to battles fought with foreign enemy kings, it is not definite. It should, however, be noted that the king is styled Choladhīra in this record. He made a grant of the village Mandara for the daily worship etc. of the god Prētīśvara into the hands of Bālaśaktiguru, exempting from the operation of this grant all the previously held brahmadeva and devabhoga lands and making it free from all imposts. The grant neither bears a date nor does it give the name of the composer or the engraver. This record had been already noticed by Prof. Kielhorn (Ep. Ind., Vol. V, p. 123 fn.). Recently a text of it accompanied by a plate has been published by Dr. P. Srinivasachari in the Journal of Iddian Mistory (Vol. XV, pp. 30 ff and p. 255 f). With reference to this contribution, it may be said that while the readings are fairly accurate, the conclusions reached therein are very tentative and conjectural. The name of the deity to which the grant is made is actually Prētīśvara as read in the text, but not Pṛithvīśvara as given in the introduction to the article. It is not here proposed to go into the several political problems raised by Dr. Srinivasachari in his article, but it is necessary to note a few important points relating to this and the allied records, viz., the Mālēpāḍu Plates of Puṇyakumāra, etc., which have a bearing upon their mutual relationship in point of genealogy and chronology. The late Rao Bahadur Krishna Sastri had also reviewed the present grant in connection with his edition of the Puṇyakumāra Plates (Pp. Ind., Vol. XI, p. 341). In the latter we are told that after Sundarananda and Dhananjaya, the younger brothers of Śiṁhavishṇu, came to the throne a king named Mahēndravikramavarman, who, among other titles, bore the surname ∆avarama. This king, I venture to suggest, is identical with king Navarāma
who, according to our plates came to the throne after Sundarananda. He was not his predecessor Sundarananda’s son and need not be looked upon either as such or as his immediate successor. But we cannot be certain whether Ereyamma, the successor of Navarāma according to our grant, was the surname of Guṇamudita or his (younger) brother Puṇyakumāra. A certain hero named Ereyamma is stated to have died in the battle at Kōṭūru, during the time of the Vaidumba king Baiduma Mahārāja (No. 327 of 1922). It is not definite, but it is possible, that the hero Ereyamma was identical with the king mentioned in our grant. The name of king Eḷañjōḷa figuring as an ancestor of Srikaṇṭha reminds us of the name of Eḷanchōḷa-Mahādēvi of No. 400 of 1904 (Ey. Ind., Vol. XI, p. 343). He was in all probability identical with the king Elachōla-Mahārāja figuring in No. 495 of 1906, which comes from Nallacheruvupalle in the Cuddapah district (See also Ep. Rep. for 1923, p. 99, paragraph 15). The name Agraṇipiḍugu of another and earlier ancestor of Srikaṇṭha and the immediate predecessor of Kōkili seems to suggest on analogy that the prenomen in the name Mārpiḍugu Rattaguḍlu, the ajnapti of inscription No. 384 of 1904 was based on one of the several surnames of Puṇyakumāra and it is not impossible that the king bore the surname Mārpiḍugu also. Hiranya rashtra identified.
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