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INSCRIPTIONS OF THE EARLY GURJARAS
grant are, therefore, Dadda (II) ─Prasāntarāga, his son Jayabhata (II), his son
Dadda (III) ─Bāhusahāya, and his son Jayabhata (III) who made the present grant.
As stated above, the grant recorded on the present plates was made on the occasion
of a lunar eclipse on the full-moon day of Māgha. The year is given in words in 1. 41
as 456 of an unspecified era. There is, however, no doubt that like the dates of the other
grants of the Early Gurjaras, this date is to be referred to the Kalachuri era. The charter
was written on the same day on which the grant was made. The date of its recording
was expressed by numerical symbols in ll.42 and 43. The symbols which occur at the
end of 1.42 give the year 456 as the year of recording, but the name of the month,
and the lunar fortnight as well as the symbols for the tithi, which were incised in the beginning of 1.43, are lost owing to the breaking off of the left-hand corner of the second
plate. The name of the week-day is also lost, as only the letters vāre can be read with certainty in the beginning of the preserved portion of 1.43. The akshara which preceded
vā of vāre is also partially broken away, but what remains of it shows that it was ma and,
therefore, the day was either Sōma Monday or Bhauma Tuesday. Assuming that the charter
was made nibaddha on the same day on which the grant was made as in the case of the Kāvī
plates1 of Jayabhata IV, Bhagvanlal and Fleet conjectured that Māgha śu. di. 15, Monday
(or Tuesday) of the year 456 was the date of the grant. Cunningham found by calculation
that with the epoch of 249-250 A.C., the full moon day of Māgha of the Chēdi (or
Kalachuri) year 4562 fell on Tuesday, the 2nd February 706 A.C., on which day there
was a lunar eclipse3 as stated in the grant. This is, therefore, the date of the grant.
As for the geographical names occurrig in the present grant, Pandit Bhagvanlal4
identified Kāyāvatāra, the site of the royal camp, with Kāvī in the Jambusar tālukā
of the Broach district; but, as pointed out by Bühler5 Kāvī does not phonetically
correspond to Kāyāvatāra; besides, the old name of Kāvī was Kāpikā which is
mentioned in the Kāvī plates of the Gujarat Rāshtrakūta prince Gōvinda6. Dr. Bühler
at first took the place-name to signify the incarnation of a son or descendant of Ka or Prajāpati, and thought that Kāyāvatāra was a Place of pilgrimage on the Narmadā7. Later
on he identified it with Kārwān (lat. 20º 3’ N. and long. 73º 10’ E.) which he connected
Philologically with Kāyāvatāra (the village possessing the Kāya manifestation8). It
seems better to derive Kārwān from Kāyāvarōhana9 which conveys the same sense as
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1See below No. 23.
2Cunningham did not state in this connection whether the year was current or expired, but
from his remarks in A. S. I. R. Vol. IX, p. 111, it is clear that he took it to be an expired year. Later
on, Kielhorn clearly showed in his article ‘the Epoch of the Kalachuri or Chēdi Era’ that the year
was expired according to the epoch A. D. 248-249. (See Ind. Ant., Vol. XVII, p. 220). This is one
of the few verifiable early dates of the era, which come from Western India. It shows that the epoch
A.D. 247-248, which Kielhorn deduced later from Kalachuri dates found in the Madhya Pradesh
and Central India, does not suit these early dates.
3 According to Von Oppolzer’s Canon der Finsternisse there was a lunar eclipse on February 2,
706, 16 h. 37 m. Greenwich time or at Lankā, 9 h. 40 m. P. M.’ Ind. Ant., Vol. XVII, p. 220.
4Ind. Ant., Vol. XIII, p. 71.
5Ibid., Vol. XVII, p. 193, n. 36.
6Ibid., Vol. V, p. 147.
7Ibid., Vol. XVII, p. 193, n. 36.
8Ibid., Vol. XVIII. p.176. In this case also Dr. Bühler derived Kāya from Ka, Brahman, and
supported the derivation by starting that in ‘Kārwān the chief deity is Brahmēśvara Mahādēva, which might
also be called Kāyēśvara, because ka and Brahman are synonyms.’
9There is metathesis here as in Achalapura (Ellichpur) and Vārānasī (Benares). Bühler later
on accepted the derivation. See Ep. Ind., Vol. I, p. 274.
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