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South
Indian Inscriptions |
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CHOLAS OF THE RENANDU COUNTRY AND VAIDUMBAS.
to Chōḷa, after whom in course of time came Karikāla. In his lineage was
born Sundarananda who was succeeded by Navarāma. The subsequent kings
were Ereyamma, Vijayakāma, Vīrārjuna, Agraṇipiḍugu, Kōkili, Mahēndravarman, Eḷamjōḷa, Nṛipakāma and Divākara, after whom came Śrīkaṇṭha, the
king of our grant. Srīkaṇṭha is stated to have acquired victory in battles.
Whether this suggests that he attained his throne by vanquishing rival
claimants or merely refers to battles fought with foreign enemy kings, it is not
definite. It should, however, be noted that the king is styled Choladhīra in
this record. He made a grant of the village Mandara for the daily worship etc.
of the god Prētīśvara into the hands of Bālaśaktiguru, exempting from the
operation of this grant all the previously held brahmadeva and devabhoga lands and making it free from all imposts.
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The grant neither bears a date nor does it give the name of the composer
or the engraver. This record had been already noticed by Prof. Kielhorn (Ep.
Ind., Vol. V, p. 123 fn.). Recently a text of it accompanied by a plate has
been published by Dr. P. Srinivasachari in the Journal of Iddian Mistory
(Vol. XV, pp. 30 ff and p. 255 f). With reference to this contribution, it may
be said that while the readings are fairly accurate, the conclusions reached
therein are very tentative and conjectural. The name of the deity to which
the grant is made is actually Prētīśvara as read in the text, but not Pṛithvīśvara as given in the introduction to the article. It is not here proposed to go
into the several political problems raised by Dr. Srinivasachari in his article,
but it is necessary to note a few important points relating to this and the allied
records, viz., the Mālēpāḍu Plates of Puṇyakumāra, etc., which have a bearing
upon their mutual relationship in point of genealogy and chronology. The
late Rao Bahadur Krishna Sastri had also reviewed the present grant in
connection with his edition of the Puṇyakumāra Plates (Pp. Ind., Vol. XI,
p. 341). In the latter we are told that after Sundarananda and Dhananjaya,
the younger brothers of Śiṁhavishṇu, came to the throne a king named
Mahēndravikramavarman, who, among other titles, bore the surname ∆avarama. This king, I venture to suggest, is identical with king Navarāma who, according to our plates came to the throne after Sundarananda. He was not his
predecessor Sundarananda’s son and need not be looked upon either as such
or as his immediate successor. But we cannot be certain whether Ereyamma,
the successor of Navarāma according to our grant, was the surname of
Guṇamudita or his (younger) brother Puṇyakumāra. A certain hero named
Ereyamma is stated to have died in the battle at Kōṭūru, during the
time of the Vaidumba king Baiduma Mahārāja (No. 327 of 1922). It is not
definite, but it is possible, that the hero Ereyamma was identical with the king
mentioned in our grant. The name of king Eḷañjōḷa figuring as an ancestor of
Srikaṇṭha reminds us of the name of Eḷanchōḷa-Mahādēvi of No. 400 of 1904
(Ey. Ind., Vol. XI, p. 343). He was in all probability identical with the king
Elachōla-Mahārāja figuring in No. 495 of 1906, which comes from Nallacheruvupalle in the Cuddapah district (See also Ep. Rep. for 1923, p. 99, paragraph
15). The name Agraṇipiḍugu of another and earlier ancestor of Srikaṇṭha
and the immediate predecessor of Kōkili seems to suggest on analogy that the
prenomen in the name Mārpiḍugu Rattaguḍlu, the ajnapti of inscription
No. 384 of 1904 was based on one of the several surnames of Puṇyakumāra and it is not impossible that the king bore the surname Mārpiḍugu
also.
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Incidentally we may say a word about the donee in the Mālepādu
plates. He is called Chiruvanahala-Kēśavaśarman. The first of these names
refers to the family or village from which Kēsavaśarman came. It is almost
certain that it refers to the village Chiruvanahala, the modern representative
of which is Chiramana, a village in the Atmakur taluk of the Nellore district.
It is also probable that the gift village Biraparu mentioned in those plates
is identical with Billupādu, an inam village (even now) in the same taluk,
within the postal jurisdiction of Atmakūr town. Hiranya-rashtra, in which
the gift village was situated, is mentioned here for the first time and it is
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