South Indian Inscriptions

KALACHURI CHEDI - ERA

with the question of the epoch of the Gupta-Valabhī era that the Hindu’s usual, though not invariable, way of expressing a date was not ‘in the year so and so’, but ‘after so many years had elapsed since such and such an event had taken place’, The case of the Chēdi era, which seemed to be an exception to the general rule, was cited by Dr. Fleet¹ in support of his view that the years of the Gupta era which are not qualified either as current or as expired should be taken as current. This controversy about the general custom of the Hindus in dating their records during the middle ages led Kielhorn to revise his conclusions about the epoch of the Chēdi era. In his article ‘Die Epoche der Cedi Aera’ in the Festgruss an Roth and in another on the Bhērā-Ghāt inscription of Alhanadēvī in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. II, both of which were published in 1893,² Kielhorn expressed his opinion that in conformity with the common usage observed in the case of other eras, the epoch of the Chēdi era should be fixed in such a way that all or at least a great majority of the available verifiable dates would be in expired years. He, therefore, proposed 247-48 A. C. as the epoch of the era. As regards the beginning of the year, he drew attention to the following remark in Colebrooke’s letter written at Nagpur on the 30th October, 1799- “The new year begins here with the light fortnight of Āśvina, but opening in the midst of Durgā’s festival, New Year’s Day is celebrated on the 1oth lunar day.” Kielhorn thought that the Āśvinādi year which was current down to Colebrooke’s time in a part of the country previously included in the Chedi kingdom might be reminiscent of the Chēdi year, and as such a year suited all the twelve Chēdi dates known till then, he fixed the 5th September (Āśvina śu. di. I) 248 A. C. as the first day of the first current year, and the 26th August (Āśvina śu. di. I) 249 A. C. as the first day of the first expired year of the Chēdi era. He next showed that all the twelve verifiable dates of the Later Kalachuris which were known till then were, without exception, in expired years.³ The two dates of the Navsāri and Kāvī plates of Jayabhata III, however, presented difficulties which Kielhorn acknowledged in the foot-notes to his List of Northern Inscription, published in 1898-99 as an Appendix to the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. V.⁴

Three more Chēdi dates containing sufficient data for verification, which were discovered subsequently, were calculated by Kielhorn before his death, viz., (I) the Sārnāth fragmentary Buddhist stone inscription of the time of Karna, dated ‘samva[tsarē 8] 10 Asvina (Āśvina) sudi 15 Ravau (corresponding, for the expired Kalachuri year 810, to Sunday the 4th October 1058 A. C.⁵), (2) Tahankāpār (first plate) of Pamparāja, dated Samvata(t) 965, Bhādrapadē vadi 10 Mriga-ri(ri)kshē So[ma]-dinē (corresponding, for the current year 965, to Monday, the 12th August 1213 A. C.⁶) and (3) Tahankāpār (second plate) of Pamparājā dated Samvat 966…. Īsva(śva)ra-samvatsarē Kārtti(tii)ka–māsē Chitrā-ri(ri)kshē Ravi-dinē Sūry-ōpa-rāgē (corresponding, for the expired Chēdi year 966, to Sunday, the 5th October 1214 A. C.⁷). Besides, he found it necessary to change his reading and the corresponding Christian date in the case of one of the previously known twelve Chēdi dates, viz. (4) that of the Shēorinārāyan image inscription, which he now read as Kalachuri-samvatsarē ||898|| Asvina-sudi 7 Sōma-dinē from a photograph supplied by Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar, and which he found by calculation to correspond, for the current Chēdi year 898, to Monday, the 24th September 1145 A. C.8 ________________

¹ See his article ‘The Gupta-Valabhī Era’ in Ind. Ant., Vol. XX (1891), p. 387.
² Kielhorn first expressed his view briefly in an article published in the Transactions of the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists, Vol. I (1893), p. 428. The Congress was held in London from the 5th to the 12th September 1892.
³ Festgruss an Roth, pp. 53-56.
⁴ See p. 57, nn. 6 and 7.
⁵ A. R. S. I. (1906-1907), p. 100.
⁶ Ep. Ind., Vol. IX, p. 129.
⁷ Ibid., Vol. IX, pp. 129-30.
⁸ Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 130.