South Indian Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE TRAIKUTAKAS

The record consists of nine lines written breadthwise on one side of the plate.1 The latter does not seem to have been properly cleaned before Dr. Bird’s facsimile was prepared; for several curves, mātrās and anusvāras, which were probably filled with verdigris on the original plate, do not appear at all in the lithograph. In making the transcript given below I have, however, taken the lithograph to be an accurate copy of the original plate, as it is now impossible to say which of the mistakes in the lithograph are due to the fault of the copyist.

The characters belong to the western variety of the southern alphabets and closely resemble those of the other Traikūtaka plates. The only points worth noticing are that the length of the medial ī is denoted by a curve curling to the right in kshīrōdah, 1.7 and to the left in kshīra-tōyō in the same line; the medial ū is shown in a peculiar way in ghūrnnat-, 1.7; the sign for the upadhmānīya occurs in 1.2 and that for the jihvāmūlīya in 1.7. The language is Sanskrit and except for a verse at the end, the record is in prose throughout. The only orthographical peculiarities that call for notice are that the consonant following r is reduplicated in many cases; see e.g., pravarddhamāna-, 1. I, -antarggata- 1.2, etc., and that v is doubled seemingly after an anusvāra in sa[m*]vvatsara, 1.1.

The inscription refers itself to the prosperous regime of the Traikūtakas and records that in the year two hundred and forty-five (expressed in words only) Buddharuchi, the son of Buddhaśrī and Pushyavarman and a devoted servant of the holy Śākya Sage (Buddha) and the venerable monk who heard his law, who hailed from the village Kānaka included in the Sindhu vishaya, erected at Krishnagiri the Chaitya, in which the plate was found, and which he dedicated to the venerable Śāradvatīputra, the foremost disciple of the great sage (Buddha). After invoking the blessings of gods, Yakshas, Siddhas, Vidyādharas, Mānibhadras, Pūrnabhadra, Pañchika, Vajrapāni, etc., the record closes with the hope that the fame of Pushyamitra’s son (i.e., Buddharuchi) would last as long as the milky ocean, the Mēru mountain and rivers would endure. The last line contains only two letters which seem to read dādhā and perhaps refer to the tooth relic of Śāradvatīputra on which the stūpa was erected.

Pandit Bhagvanlal, who first read correctly the dynastic name Traikūtaka, connected it with the expression containing the date, and understood it to mean the two hundred and forty-fifth year of the sovereignty of the Traikūtakas. He, therefore, thought that he had found in the present plate a clear statement that the era known as the Kalachuri or Chēdi era was founded by the Traikūtakas, who, in later times, assumed the dynastic name of Haihaya or Kalachuri2. This view was at first accepted by Fleet3, but later on4 he pointed out in his article on the era that the real meaning of the expression, in accordance with an early Hindu method of expressing dates, may just as well be ‘during the augmenting sovereignty of the Traikūtakas and in the year 245 (of an unspecified era).’ As a matter of fact, we find no dynastic or regional name associated with the era till the eleventh century A.C. The date of the present inscription would correspond to 493-94 A.C. or 494-95 A.C., according as the year 245 was current or expired. It does not contain any details for calculation.
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¹No details about the plate, e.g., its breadth, height and weight, have been recorded.
²See his article ‘Two new grants of the Traikūtaka dynasty’ in the P.V.O.C., pp. 222 ff.
³D.K.D. (Bomb. Gaz., Vol. I, part II), pp. 294-95.
⁴See his article ‘Trikūta and the so-called Kalachuri or Chēdi Era’, J.R.A.S. (1905), pp. 566 ff.