South Indian Inscriptions

INCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF TRIPURI

ff. It is edited here from the original stone and its inked estampages kindly supplied by the Government Epigraphist for India.

The writing covers a space 2’ 7” broad and 1’ 8½” High. The average size of the letters is .5”. The surface of the stone which was originally made none too smooth, has been further damaged by exposure to weather and several letters in the middle as well as the right-hand side of the first fourteen lines and some more in the middle of lines 19-24 have become illegible.

The characters are Nāgarī. The letters were beautifully written and carefully executed. It will suffice to draw attention to the proper sigh of b as an independent letter in bibhrat=, 1. 25 and in its superscript form in =bvabhīv=, 1.9, to the form of the initial i in iti, 1. 12, of the initial ri in richām, 1. 15 and of ś, the left member of which resembles the English figure 8 in Śivāya, 1.I. The language is Sanskrit, and except for the obeisance to Śiva in the beginning of the first line and the date in the last, the inscription is in verse thoughout. The verse are not numbered, but they appear to be fifty in all. The ortho graphy dose not present anything calling for special notice except that v and b as well as ś and s are confounded in some places.

The object of the inscription is to record the construction of a temple of the moon crested god Śiva) by Vimalaśiva, the religious preceptor of the king Jayasimha of the Later Kalachuri Dynasty of Tripurī. The god was named Kīrt Īśvara after Vimala śiva’s guru Kīrtiśiva. The inscription also records that the king Jyasimha endowed the temple with three villages on the occasion of a solar eclipse.^¹

The record is dated in words as well as numerical figures in the year 926 without any specification of the mouth, fortnight, tithi or week-day. This date must, of course, be referred to the Kalachuri era. It corresponds, for the expired Kalachuri year 926, to 1174-75 A.C. In this year there was only one solar eclipse, viz., that which occurred on the amāvāsyā of the pūrņimānta Pausha, on Tuesday, the 26th November. 1174 A.C. This is, therefore, probably the date of Jayasimha’s grant if it was made in the same Kalachuri year in which the record was put up.^² It dose not admit of verification, but it falls in the reign of Jayasimha, who, we know, was rulling at least from K.918^³ to K. 928.4

After three mangala-ślōkas in praise of Śiva, we are told that the god revealed the Śaiva doctrine for the realization of the self by the worlds. Some Śaiva teachers were named in lines 4-7, but the names of Vimalaśiva⁵ and Vastuśiva⁶ only are now completely legible. In line 8 we Purushaśiva who is described as the cause of Yaśahkarņa’s prosperity. Next is mentioned Śaktiśiva in connection with Gayākarņa.
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¹ I take ravēb parvaņi in line 26 to mean ‘on the occasion of a solar eclipse’. Parvan also means a sań- krānti, but in that case the name of the sańkrānti would have been specified.
²There was a solar eclipse on the amāvāsyā of pūrnimānta Āshādha( the 1st June 1174 A.C.) also. So the year cn be taken as current. But current years are cited very rarely.
³ Above, No. 63.
⁴ Below, No.66.
⁵ This Vimalaśiva is probably different from the Śaiva ascetic who put up the present inscription.
⁶ I examined the name of this ascetic carefully to see if be identified with Vāmāśiva in view of the suggestion recently made that the latter was the spiritual teacher of Karņa and represents Vāmadēva on whose feet several Kalachuri kings from Karņa downwards are described as meditating. (See Ind. Hist. Quart., Vol. XIV, pp.96 ff.). A Śaiva Āchārya named Vāmarāśi is also mentioned as living in Banaras in the Sārnāth inscription of Mahīpāla, dated V.1083, Ind. Ant., Vol. XIV, p. 140. The Śaiva ascetic mentioned in the beginning of line 6 in the present record may have been a conterporary of Karņa; for the next legible name is that of Purushaśiva who was the guru of Karņa’s son Yaśahkarņa. But the second aksbara of the aforementioned name does not at all appear like ma. I have shown elsewhere that Vāmadēva was a Kalachuri king and not a Śaiva ascetic; see A Volume of Eastern and Indian Studies, pp. 152 ff.