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BOMBAY-KARNATAKA
INSCRIPTIONS
VOLUME
I - Part I
INTRODUCTION
The
Part which is now placed before the scholars comprises texts of 118
inscriptions secured from the Dharwar and Bijapur districts of the
Bombay-Karnatak during the years 1925-30.
Of these one belongs to the Pallavas of Kanchi, four to the.
Early Chalukyas of Badami, thirty-nine to the Rashtrakutas of
Malkhed while the remaining seventy-four refer themselves to the Western
Chalukyas of Kalyana up to the end of the reign of Bhuvanaikamalladeva
Somesvara II. Most of these
inscriptions are not previously noticed or published by that pioneer
scholar Dr. Fleet whose Dynasties of the Kanarse Districts
published in Part II of Volume I of the Bombay Gazetteer remains
even to-day, though out of date, a monumental work on the historical
account of the ruling dynasties of the Kannada districts.
The discoveries of fresh epigraphs made in recent years by myself
and Messers. R.S.
Panchamukhi and N. Lakshminarayana Rao, furnish some new and important
details in connection with a few kings of the families represented in
them.
THE
PALLAVAS:
The
earliest important epigraph in this volume is the Badami Rock
Inscription (No. 1), engraved in the Pallava-Grantha characters of the 7th
century A.D. The record is
unfortunately mutilated owing to the effects of wind and rain to which
the rock is exposed. But
from what remains of it, it may be made out that Mahamalla [Nara?] simh
who is described in the last 3 lines as the foremost Pallava king [Nara]-simhavishnu
of the Bharadvaja-gotra occupied Vatapi and (probably seized) a
pillar of victory standing in that place, in the 13th year of
his reign. It is to be
regretted that the next two lines which are in the Chalukyan alphabet of
the period, and contained to Saka year combined with the regnal year of
the king are completely damaged except the portion âSakavarshe
shashtyuâ i.e., Saka year . . . . . . .(increased by) sixty â¦.
This date, to fall in the 7th century A.D. may be interpreted
to range from Saka 560 to 569 in which case the lacuna may be
supplied as shashty-uttara-pancha-satatame eka (up to nave)dhike.
This would definitely place the occupation of Vatapi by
Narasimhavarman I some time before or within the period Saka 560-69
(=A.D. 638-647), which must have corresponded to the 13th
year of his reign. Since
the Chinese pilgrim Hieun Tsiang visited Maharashtra when Pulakesin II
was at the zenith of his power, i.e., in about A.D. 639, the above
mentioned event must have taken place only after that date.
Fleet has, on the strength of the non-mention of the sovereign
power in the Kaira grant of Vijayavarma-raja, assigned the Pallava
occupation of Vatapi to sometime before A,D. 643 and this apparently
receives direct support from the expression shashty-utta[ra], etc.,
occurring in lines 7-8 of the present epigraph.
Another
important point deserving notice in this inscription is that
Narasimhavarman who is called in line 5 by the name . . . . simhavishnu
evidently [Nara]-simhavishnu is stated apparently to have seized (?) a
pillar of victory (jayastambha) at Vatapi.
In the Velurpalaiyam plates of Nandivarman III, he is similarly
described as having seized the pillar of victory standing in the centre
of Vatapi (Vatapi-madhye vijit-ari-varggah sthitan=jaya-stambham=alambhayad=yah).
It is, however, worth noticing that in no inscription of his
family is this king called narasimhavishnu, whereas his name is
specifically mentioned as Narasimhavarman.
This pillar appears to have been planted by the Chalukyas at
badami after having conquered the Kadambas of Banavasi to whose sway,
the Badami region belonged. It
may be noted that Mayurasarman, the progenitor of the Kadambas, was
placed, by the Pallavas, in charge of the country bounded by Srisaila in
the east and Prehara(?) in the west and as such the Pallavas appear to
have claimed allegiance from the kadambas from the beginning of the
latterâs political career.
The Kadambas are, however, stated in their inscriptions to have
waged constant wars with the Pallavas (cf. Pallava-pralayanalah applied
to Mrigesa varman in his Halsi plates)
When the Kadamba power was on the decline at the end of the 5th
century A.D. the Pallavas might have attempted to establish their
authority once again in that region which was apparently resented by the
Chalukyas who were probably the growing subordinate chiefs ruling over
the Vatapi region under the Kadambas.
The Chalukyas then meted out a crushing blow to their nominal
overlords the Kadambas and other enemies, and as a signal of their
unchallenged victory, planted the jayastambha in the heart of
Vatapi. That the Pallavas
had attempted to nip in the bud the rise of the Chalukyas is explicitly
mentioned in the expression akrantatma-balonnatim Pallavanam patim, i.e.,
âthe Pallava king who had opposed the rise of his (i.e., Chalukya
Kingâs ) Powerâ occurring in the Aihole inscription of Pulakesin II.
The must refer to the conflict of the two powers before the
campaign of Pulakesin II against the Pallava kinds as recorded in the
Aihole inscription. This is supported by the statement in the Mahakuta
pillar inscription of Kirtivarman I that the king had vanquished the
Dramila, among the several chiefs of South India, who must be no other
than the Pallava. The jayastambha
mentioned in the rock inscription must therefore be taken to refer
to the commemoration of the victory won by the Chalukyas over their
enemies the Kadambas and Pallavas and it is but meet to infer from the
sequence that the Pallavas attempted to recover their original territory
by capturing the pillar of victory planted in their enemies, capital.
THE
CHALUKYAS OF BADAMI:
Only
three kings are represented in the inscriptions published here, viz.,
Vijayaditya-Satyasraya, vikramaditya II and Kirtivarman II.
No. 2 which belongs to the reign of Vijayaditya comes from
Kurtakoti in the Gadag taluk, Dharwar district, and states that the
kings, officer Loketinimmadi was administering Kuruttakunte, i.e.,
modern Kurtakoti where the inscription is found.
The name Loketinimmadi is made up Loketi and immadi
of which the first component word is apparently a corrupt form of
Lokaditya. If this surmise
is correct Loketinimmadi would be a male officer.
This receives an indirect support from similar names of officers,
i.e., Lokate or Lokate occurring in Mysore Archaeological Report, 1911,
page 38, and in the Byadgi inscription of Rashtrakuta Krisha II where in
Lokate is mentioned as the son of Bankeya.
The suffix irmmadi or immadi appears to have been
applied to the names of female persons also as in the case of
Revakanimmadi and Singannanimmadigal.
No. e. refers to the siege of Jakkili by king Vijayaditya-Bhatara
but does not mention the
circumstances under which the event occurred.
The Anniegeri inscription (No. 5) of Kirtivarman recounts
that a Jaina temple chediya was constructed by Gamunda Kaliyamma
at Jebulageri evidently a suburb of Annigeri, in the 8th year
of the kingâs reign and that a kirttana (sculpture or more
probably a statue) was set up in front of it by Kodisulara Kuppa alias
Kirttivarma-gosasi. This
incidentally testifies to the practice, then in vogue, of erecting
statues in public places which is a common feature of perpetuating the
glory of great persons, in modern times.
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THE
RASHTRAKUTAS:
The
earliest inscription of the Rashtrakuta dynasty is the Belhod record
(No. 6) of Prabhutavarsha jagattunga, ie., Govinda II or II both
of whom bore that epithet. It
records a gift of gosasra made by Echamma and Erevasa at Belhode.
Gosahasra is mentioned in Hemadriâs Danakhanda as
one of the 16 great gifts such as Tulapursusha-dana,
Hiranyagarbha-dana, etc., and does not necessarily mean thousand
cows though the chief object of the gift was a particular number of
cows. While editing the
Gudigere inscription of Maharaja Marasalba Fleet suggests that gosahasra
is different from gosasa which meant
âa cowpen, a station of cowherds.â
It may, however, be noted that the Chinchli inscription (No. 15)
which he quotes in support of his opinion does not use the word gosahasra
at all whereas the term gosasa is used twice in line 3 of the
same record. Further the
word always governs a predicate meaning âgive, grant, etc.â as kotton,
ildon, etc., indicating thereby that gosahasra was a kind of
gift. In some places gosasa
is substituted by gosahasra from which we have to deduce that sasa
is a variant Kannada tadbhava of sahasra though according
to kannada grammarians the latter should become sasira.
In any case, gosasa cannot be considered an amplified
form of goshtha as suggested by Fleet but is in all probability a
variant Kannada rendering of gosahasra as suggested by Mr. N.
Lakshminarayan Rao in his article on the âTwo Stone inscription of
Krishna IIâ : Saka 805 (Ep. Ind., Vol. XXI, page 207).
The
son and successor of Govinda III was Amoghavarsha I who ascended
the Rashtrakuta throne in A.D. 814.
He is represented in this volume by 12 inscriptions ranging I
date from Saka 759 (=A.D. 837) to Saka 796 (=A.D. 874).
The earliest date is furnished by the Kesarbhavi inscription (No.
7) which, though badly damaged, seems to record details of some skirmish
in Saka 759. This record
reveals for the first time that king had a daughter name Revakanimmadi
who was administering Edodore district under her father.
It is interesting to note that royal ladies were enjoying a good
share in the administration of the country as early as the 9th
century A.D. The Ededore
country over which Revakanimmadi was ruling, is evidently identical with
the Ededore-nadu of the Yewur inscription of A.D. 1077 (E.P. Ind., Vol.
XII, page 269) which is specified as Ededore-2000 in an inscription of
Western Chalukya Vikramaditya VI, dated in A.D. 1084 and in the Miraj
plates of Jayasimha II bearing a date in A.D. 1024 (ibid. page
303). Fleet has identified
this district with âa stretch of country between the rivers Krishna on
the north and Tungabhadra on the south comprising a large part of the
present Raichur district.â The
village Kesarbhavi where the present inscription is secured, seems to
have been included in this district though it does not find mention in
the body of the record. For,
there would, otherwise, be no relevancy in the inscribed stone being set
up outside the limits of the Edodore country which Revakanimmadi was
administering. Further
Karatikally-300 which was a subdivision of Edeodre-2000 (ibid. page 304)
must have extended into the interior of the Hungund taluk up to at least
Kesarbhavi which is situated within fifty miles from Karadikallu in the
Lingasgur taluk of the Raichur district after the division
Karadikally-300 was named. In
this case the south-west limit of the Edore country would be pushed back
by a few miles to the west of 76, 15â which the Ededore country on the
south-western side.
Revakanimmadi
is a hitherto unknown daughter of Amogavarsha I who, as stated in the
inscription, had been married to a certain Erega[niga].
It is tempting to identify this Ereganga with the Western Ganga
chief of that name, son of Rachamalla I, who flourished during this
period. But this is
rendered impossible by the fact that Amogavarsha I had married his
another daughter Chandrobbalabbe to Gunaduttaranga Butuga son of the
above-mentioned Ereganga and brother of Rachamalla II.
(Circa A.D. 870-90). It
is therefore not certain who the Ereganga of the present inscription
was. It is probably from
the name of the prince, that he was a member of the Western Ganga
family, but in what way he was related to the main ruling line, remains
to be determined by future discoveries.
It is worthwhile to mention here that the queue of Butuga II was
also known as Revakanimmadi who happens to be the daughter of Amogavarsa
Baddega. Since the date and
paleography of the Kesarbhavi inscription are indisputably to be
assigned to the reign of Amogavarsha I, there would be absolutely no
justification to connect the princess Revakanimmadi of the present
record with the daughter of Amogavarsha III.
The latter princess appears to have been named after her
great-grand-aunt Revakanimmadi, sister of Krishna II.
The
next inscription in chronological order hails from Huvina-Hippargi (No.
8) in the Bagevadi taluk of the Bijapur district.
It is dated in Saka 784 during the reign of the Amogavarsha I
whose genealogy is traced for four generation from Kannarasa, ie.,
Krisha I. Of
the Yadava family. The donee Goleya-Bhatta who received a gift of the whole
village Pipparage in Kannavuri-vishya, for his ability in the science of
great-grandson of Kannapera. It
is not unlikely that Goleya-Bhattaâs family enjoyed a special
privilege of being State astrologers to the Rashtrakuta family for the
generation previously and
now himself received this royal gift in the presence of the Mahasamantas
and the Mandalikas which fact bears testimony to the high status
which the donee must have enjoyed in the court of Amogavarsha I. From
the description of the gift as Rattamaltandana-datti in the
record, it may be presumed that Amogavarsha bore a hitherto unknown biruda
Rattamarttanda. In the
fragmentary inscription of this king found at Aihole (No. 18), reference
is made to his ânew administrationâ in the expression navarajyam
geyye which perhaps suggests his abdication of the throne through
renunciation and re-assumption of the reins of Government as trationâ
soon after his accession to the throne.
This surmise receives confirmation from a verse
in the Ratnamalika or Prasnottararatnamalika which states
that Amoghavarsha composed the Ratnamalaika after he had
abdicated the throne âin consequence of the growth of the ascetic
spirit in him.
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The
biruda Rattamarttanda applied to the king calls for a few
remarks. The name Ratta
given to the family or race to which the king belonged, appears to be a
Dravidian word and must have been sanskritised into Rashtrakuta and not vice
versa. If the
contrary is the fact, the tadbhava or the corrupt form of
Rashtrakuta should have been not Ratta but Rashtraudha
which latter is still preserved in the name of the Rashtraudhabhayudaya,
a Mahakavya describing the achievements of the Rashtraudha chiefs of
Rajputana. Fleet has in a
lengthy paper on this subject arrived at the same conclusion on quite
different grounds (Ep. Ind., Vol. VII, pages 214 ff.).
Hence Ratta must have been the original family name of the kings
of Malkhed. This further
points to the family being Dravidian in stock or at any turies.
That their home was the Kannada country is suggested by the
kannada poem Kaviranamarga of Nripatunga Amogavrsha I wherein the
author shows his bias for the chaste Kannada language current in the
territory between Muduvolal and Kupananagara, and by the sign-manual of
the princes of the Gujarat Rashtrakuta branch wherein the Kannada
script-the alphabet of the Kannada country where the main branch
ruled-is used in preference to the Gujarat or Valabhi script in which
the whole record is engraved.
The
records of Amoghavarsha in the volume show that Purigere-nadu was under
the administration of Ahavaditya Kuppeyarasa of the Yadava family-also
spelt as Adva in the Soratur inscription (Ep. Ind., Vol. XIII,
page 77) in A.D. 865-67 and that Belvola-nadu was held by Devannayya in
A.D. 869-73. During the
reign of Krishna II the same division were respectively governed by
Indapayya in A.D. 883 and by Mangatorana in A.D. 892.
From an undated inscription of Krishna II. at Mevundi we find
again Mahasamnta Kuppeyarasa holding charge of Puligere-300 in addition
to Kogali-500 and Masavadi-140, while in his other inscription at
Mevundi dated in Saka 818 the chief is introduced as the Beloval country
appears to have passed into the hands of Mahasamnta mahasrimanta or
mahasirivanta who held it from A.D. 901 to 909.
The
latest year for king Amoghavarsha known from the inscriptions under
publication is Saja 799 which fell in March 878 A.D.
This must have been the last year of amoghavarsha, for his son
and successor Krishna IIâs earliest known record secured recently at
Hirebidri in the Ranebennur taluk of the Dharwar district (Bombay
Karnatak List for 1935-36, No. 100) bears a date in Saka 800.
The last year of Krishna II is furnished by the kavajageri
inscription in the volume, which has the Saka date 834.
Among his officers, Indapayya, Mangaorana, Mahasirivanta,
Vatsayya and Mayirma are brought to light for the first time.
His Venkatapur inscription applies to the king, curiously enough,
the epithet Amoghavarsha which was borne by his father Nripatunga.
If this is not a mistake, we have to suppose that the epithet had
been assumed by both father and son just as Indra II and his son Govinda
IV had borne the distinguishing epithet Nityavarsha (A.R. Nos. 277 of
1918, 235 of 1937-38 and Arch.Sur. Report for the 1929-30, page
173, ibid. 1930-34, Part I, pages 235 and 244) which is actually
applied to the king in a record from Asundi, dated in Saka 847 falling
in the reign of Govinda IV. Similarly,
Krishna III and his father Baddega are known to have borne the biruda
Amoghavarsha (Arch. Sur. Report for 1937-38).
It may therefore be concluded that the birudas or surnames
such as Amoghavarsha, Nityavarsha, etc., were not personal titles of the
respective kings as suggested by Fleet in his discussion on âThe
appellations of the Rashtrakutas of Malkhedâ (Ep. Ind., Vol.
VI, pages 167 ff.).
A
well-preserved record of Govinda IV at Kavajageri (No. 35) who is
introduced by the biruda Suvarnavasha mentions a number of
temples such as those of Bhatari, Vinaka (Vinayaka), Matavamadeva (?)
Kesavaditya, etc., built by Ballajja, the Gavunda of Kovujagere.
It also states that Ballajja constructed stone (tombs) for his
grandfather and his two sons who were evident y dead and also got a
gavi-kalu prepared for himself. This testifies to the practice of erecting stone-chambers in
memory of the dead in the 10th Century A.D.
The inscription further makes an interesting reference to the
coins gadyana and dharana which must have been current in the Rashtrakuta
dominion. Though gadyana
or gadyanaka, suvarna and dramma are met with in the
records of this period, dharana is of reared occurrence and as
such deserved to be noted. The
weight and value for the several coins are, however, not definitely
known. It is unfortunate
that not a single coin which can be indisputably ascribed to the
Rashtrakuta mintage is discovered so far.
Mention of the temple of Aditya (Sun-god) and of the images of
nandi and Makara in this record is noteworthy.
The
next king after Suvarnavarsha represented in this volume is Akalavarsha
Krishna III , who is introduced in the Ron inscription (No. 36) with
the epithets Samastabhuvanasraya and Prithvivallabha which
were subsequently adopted by the Western Chalukya of Kalyana became the
Characteristic terms in the
latterâs inscriptions.
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