South Indian Inscriptions

INCRIPTIONS OF THE KALACHURIS OF TRIPURI

donee was the Brāhmaņa Viśvarūpa, son of Nārāyana, grandson of Vāmana and greatgrand son of Āmaha^¹ who belonged to the Kauśika gōtra with the pravaras Auddālaka,^² Dēvarāta and Viśvāmitra, who had emigrated from Vēsāla. The date of the śrāddha is given, in line 40, as Saturday, the second tithi of the dark fortnight The latter tithi and the year are expresseof Phālguna and that of the charter, in the last line, as Monday, the 9th tithi of the dark fortnight of Phālguna in the year 793. d in numerical figures only.

As Dr. Fleet has shown from his calculation of the date of Karņa’s Goharwa plates, this śrāddha was performed on the first anniversary of Gāngēyadēva’s death and this view is also confirmed by the wording of the grant.³ From other Kalachuri records⁴ we know that Gāngēya died at the foot of the holy banyan tree at Prayāga. Karna seems, therefore, to have especially gone to Prayāga to perform the first annual śrāddha of his father at the holy place where he had died. The dates mentioned in this inscription, like those in other Kalachuri records, must of course be referred to the Kalachuri era. Though no year is mentioned in connection with the first date, it is probably identical with that of the second; for, it is not likely that the issuing of the plates was delayed by more than a few days or months at most. Of these two dates, the second is quite regular; for according to the epoch of 247-48 A.C., the ninth tithi of the dark fortnight of the pūrnimānta Phālguna in the expired year 793 ended 18 hours after mean sunrise on Monday, the corresponding Christian date being the 18th January 1042 A.C. The date of the śrāddha, however, if it refers to the same Kalachuri year as it evidently does, is irregular; for the second tithi of the dark fortnight of the pūrnimānta Phālguna in that year commenced 5 h. 20 m. after mean sunrise on Sunday (the 10th January 1042 A.C.) and ended 7 h. 10 m. after mean sunrise next day.5 It was not, thus, connected with Saturday in any way. This date, therefore, appears to be irregular. Dr. Kielhorn, however, found by calculation that the same tithi of the previous month (viz., the pūrnimānta Māgha) was current at sunrise on Saturday, the 12th December 1041 A.C. He, therefore, supposed that the śrāddha was really performed on the second tithi of the dark half of Māgha, but ‘the writer of the grant, who cannot be absolved of carelessness in other respects, wrongly put down in 1.40 the month in which he was writing the grant’. Such an explanation is not impossible and other cases of a similar type can easily be cited.⁶ But this involves the supposition that there was an interval of more than a month between the making of the grant and the recording of it. Some scholars have, therefore, attempted to explain away the irregularity of the present date in other ways.

Dr. Fleet thought that the mistake lay in the week–day (or else in the tithi) rather than in the month,⁷ but he offered no explanation of it. Rai Bahadur Hiralal, on the other hand, suggested that though Gāngēya died on the second tithi of the dark half of Phālguna, and hence the śrāddha must be performed on that date, in the year 793 it fell on a Sunday, which is not an auspicious day for such ceremonies. It was, therefore, per-
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¹ See below, p. 244, n. 14.
² See below, p.249, n. 20.
³ The text mentions the samvatsara-śrāddha, which means the śrāddha on the first anniversary. The śrāddha on a later anniversary is called prati-sāmvatsarika-śrāddha.
⁴ See, for instance, v. 12 of the Khairha plates of Yaśahkarna (below, No. 56)
⁵ According to Kielhorn’s calculations, the tithi commenced 4 h, 15 m. after mean sunrise on Sunday, the 10th January 1042 A.C., and ended 5 h. 49 m. after mean sunrise of Monday, the 11th January, Ep. Ind., Vol. II, p. 300.
⁶. See, e.g., the date of the Pēndrābandh plates (below, No. 101).
⁷ Ep. Ind., Vol. XI, p. 146, n. 7.