South Indian Inscriptions

KALCHURI OF TRIPURI

of the Parivrājaka kings down to 528 A.C. at least. It is, however, not known who was holding that country when Vāmarāja invaded it and annexed it to this kingdom.

Two or three generations seem to have separated Vāmarāja from Sańkaragana I of Tripuri. We do not know even the names of the princes who ruled in this period. Perhaps Mayuraja, the author of the Sanskrit play Udāttarāghava, was one of them. He is described by Rājasekhara as a Karachuli (i.e., Kalachuri) poet.¹ Another Sanskrit poet, Bhimata, whom Rājasekhara mentions as the lord of Kālañjara, perhaps belonged to the same royal family. Rajasekhara tells us that he composed five Sanskrit plays, of which Svapnadasānana was judged to be the best.

Sańkaragana I is the next known Kalachuri prince. Only two records of his reign have so far been discovered. The one discovered at Saugor registers some religious or charitable work done by a woman for the spiritual merit of her father and mother. In this record Sańkaragana is mentioned with the imperial titles of Paramabhattāraka, Mahārājādhirāja and Paramēsvara, which show that he must have been ruling over a fairly large territory. The second inscription is incised on the pillar of a temple at Chhoti Deori, about a hundred miles to the east of Saugor. It records the donation of a granary in two villages in the neighbourhood, apparently to the god Siva enshrined in the temple. This record also is not dated; but on palæographic grounds it can be referred to the same age as the aforementioned Saugor stone inscription, viz., about the middle of the eighth century A.C.

The names of the successors of this Sankaragana are not known until we come to Lakshmanarāja I of the Kāritalāi stone inscription dated K. 593 (841-42 A.C.) In the century that intervened between the reigns of these two kings, several important events took place in the political history of North India. In the second half of the eighth century A.C., the Pratiharas and the Palas were contending for supremacy at Kanauj; but they were both vanquished by the Rashtrakuta kings Dhruva and Gōvinda III. The Sañjan plates² of Amoghavarsha I tell us that Gōvinda III, after defeating Nagabhata II and Chandragupta, both of whom were evidently rulers of Central India, marched to the foot of the Himalayas, where Dharmapala and his protégé Chakrayudha, the king of Kanauj, submitted to him. Then he returned to the bank of Narmada, and acquiring Malava, Kosala, Kalinga, Vengi, Dahala and Odraka countries, made his servants rule them. This suggests that Govinda III raided these countries and either exacted tributes from the ruling princes, or after deposing them, placed his own nominees in charge of their territories. That he did so in one case at least is known from other records. The Baroda plates³ of Karka, dated Saka 734, state that Karka was made a door-bolt to protect the king of Malwa from the Gurjara king who had become puffed up by conquering the lords of Gauda and Vanga. In some other records of the Gujarat Rashtrakutas, we find references to battles fought by them with the Gurjara-Pratiharas in Ujjayini. Malwa was, therefore, made a protectorate, and a subordinate branch of the Rashtrakutas was established in Gujarat to check the advance of the Prathiharas. In the case of the Kalachuris also, he followed a similar policy. He did not, of course, supplant the ruling prince, but he made him acknowledge his suzerainty.⁴ The subordinate position of the Kalachuri king Lakshmanaraja I is indicated by the Karitalai inscription⁵ of his reign, which, even in its present fragmentary condi-
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¹ Jalhana’s Suktimuktavali (Gaekwad’s Or. Series), p. 46.
² Ep. Ind., Vol. XVIII, pp. 235 ff.
³ Ind. Ant. Vol. XII, p. 158.
⁴ The Nilgund inscription of Amōghavarsha I states that Govinda III fettered the prince of the fort Chitrakuta. Ep. Ind., Vol. VI, p. 103. This fort was probably in the occupation of the Kalachuris at that time.
⁵ No.37.