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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
INCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF TRIPURI The plate measures 15 ⅗“ by 9” and is inscribed on one side only.’ It is quite smooth, the edges of it being not fashioned thicker, nor turned up, nor protected in any way. As the result, the preservation of the inscription is only fairly good ; for the surface of the plate is a good deal worn, especially in the proper left half down to about line 14 and in the right half from about line 8 to 14, so that some aksharas here are only faintly visible, and a few others are altogether illegible….─In the upper part of the plate there is a ring-hole ; but the ring with any seal that may have been attached to it is not now forth- coming. The weight of the plates is 192¾ tolas.’¹ The average size of the letters is about, 25”. The characters are Nāgarī. The technical execution is fair. Except for two opening verses in honour of Brahman and Bhātī (the goddess of speech), the benedictive and imprecatory verses at the end and a stray quarter of the Indravajrā or the Anushţubh metre here and there, the whole record is in prose. Both the metre and the grammar are faulty in several places. Mistakes of the former are pointed out in the foot-notes to the text. As regards those of grammar, attention may be drawn to the wrong gender in sāmantaśirōratnō in 1.6, the faulty compounds in śuta-dvau and mātŗi-pitrō- in ll.6 and 14 respectively and the syntactical blunder in sō-haḿ . . .samājńāpayati vōdhayati cha in ll.7-8. Final consonants, are not properly marked. The writer’s carelessness is betrayed by the omission and transposition of words in many verses and the orthographical mistakes such as the use of the dental s for the palatal ś (e.g., in sarmaņē in several places in ll.10-12) and vice versa (e.g.,in śūkshmā in l.2, śuta-dvau l.6 etc.), that of n in for ņ in punya-yasō, l.14 and punya-karmmāņau, l.18. The sign of v is used to denote b in all places except babhūva in l.5.
As stated before, the inscription opens with two verses, one in praise of Brahman and the other in that of Bhāratī, the goddess of speech. The first of these occurs in several copper-plate charters of the Later Kalachuris, while the second with some alterations is met with in three records of the Kalachuri king, Karņa.² The inscription then refers itself to the auspicious and victorious reign of the Paramabhaţţāraka, Mahārājādhirājā and Paramēśvara, the illustrious Vijayadēva, a devout worshipper of Mahēśvara and the lord of Trikalińga, who by his own arm had acquired suzerainty over the three kings (viz.,) the lord of horses, the lord of elephants and the lord of men, and who meditated on the feet of the Paramabhaţţāraka, mahārājā- dhirājā and Paramēśvara, the illustrious Vāmadēva, a devout worshipper of Mahēśvara. Worthy of note is the epithet Parama-māhēśvara here applied to Vāmadēva, for it clearly shows that the latter cannot be identified with the god Śiva. As the description of Vijaya- dēva is closely similar to that of the Kalachuri king Jayasiṁha in the Rewa plate of Kīrtivarman, he is evidently identical with Vijayasiṁha, the son and successor of Jayasiṁha. This identification is again corroborated by the agreement of dates. For, as shown below, the date of the present inscription corresponds to 1195 A.C. It is twenty years later than the date of the Rewa inscription of Kīrtivarman (viz.,K. 926 or 1175) A.C.) and this squares with the relation of Vijayasiṁha to jayasiṁha. Again, the date of the present inscription is only two years later than that of the preceding Rewa stone inscription of Malayasiṁha which belongs to the reign of Vijayasi?ha.3 The inscription next gives the pedigree of the donor Salakshaņavarman, who ___________ 1Ind. Ant., Vol. XVII, p.227.
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