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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Mr. H. Krishna Sastri has recently brought to notice a new and highly interesting record, of one of the early Gaṅga rulers of Mysore, which is incised on a set of three copper plates from Penukoṇḍa in the Anantapūr District, Madras. I have the record in hand for editing in the Epigruphia Indica; and in my paper on it I shall discuss fully its nature, its date, and its bearing on certain other records of the same series. As, however, its date can only be fixed on the palaeographic evidence, which in this case entails a somewhat long setting out so that my paper cannot be published at any very early time, and as an account of the record is awaited with eagerness in certain quarters, I give here a brief notice of it, and also deal with another matter which is connected with it.
page 471 note 1 See his Annual Report on Epigraphy for the year 1913–14, p. 11, No. 12, and p. 83, paras. 3, 4.
page 473 note 1 I put aside, of course, the Śaka dates which are asserted in a few of the spurious Ganga records and in the imaginative chronicle entitled Koṅgudēśarājākkaḷ: they are worthless, and do not even fit in with each other.
page 473 note 2 Namely, (1) the Māṅgaḷūr grant, issued from Daśanapura, , Ind. Ant., vol. 5, p. 155Google Scholar, and plates; and (2) the Pīkira grant, issued from Menmātura, , Epi. Ind., vol. 8, p. 161Google Scholar, and plate.
page 474 note 1 On this point see note 1 on p. 476 below.
page 474 note 2 See his Mysore Archaeological Report of 1909, paras. 35, 112, and for details his Report of 1910, para. 115. Two manuscripts of the work have been found; one in Nāgarī at Bombay, and the other in Kanarese characters at Mūḍabidare in South Kanara. The work is a Sanskṛit one, based on Prākṛit writings, from one of which, the Trilōkaprajñapti, it quotes a few verses. I have it from Mr. Narasimhachar, in answer to a reference, that it is a Digambara work.
page 474 note 3 I give them from Mr. Narasimhachar's presentation of them in para. 115 of his Report of 1910.
page 475 note 1 Read Siṁhaśūr, with ś instead of s. Mr. Narasimhachar has taken this name as Siṁhasūri: but that would give here Siṁhasūry-ṛishiṇā, which violates the metre.
page 475 note 2 Read saṁmanyatāṁ.
page 475 note 3 It seems that one manuscript has this reading, but the other has Kāñch-īśas=Siṁha°, of course without any difference in the meaning: at any rate, Mr. Narasimhachar has given the words in both ways. Either we must amend the text into Kāñch-īśa-Siṁha°, which perhaps does not satisfy the metre quite so well: or else we must use the genitive of the base īś, ‘master, lord, ruler’, instead of the more customary īśa.
page 475 note 4 It can hardly be doubted that this reading, of the Mūḍabidare manuscript, is better than the Śak-āhvānāṁ, “of those having the appellation Śaka,” of the Bombay manuscript.
page 475 note 5 Lit. “was composed by turning round of language.”
page 475 note 6 Regarding this name see note 1 above.
page 476 note 1 I differ from Mr. Narasimhachar in taking the name of the first writer as Simhaśūra, instead of Siṁhasūri: see note 1 on p. 475 above. But I follow his view that the work was composed in Sanskṛit by that person, and that what Sarvanandin did was to write out a copy of it. I do so for the sake of not differing unnecessarily. But the text is equally well open, if not better, to being translated so as to tell us that Simhaśūra compiled the cosmography in Prākṛit, and that it was Sarvanandin who rendered it into Sanskṛit. That, however, does not affect the vital point, which is that, whatever was done by Sarvanandin, it was done in Saka 380 and in the twenty-second year of Siṁhavarman.
page 476 note 2 Compare my remarks in this Journal, 1910, p. 820, note 1.
page 477 note 1 This instance is from an Eastern Chalukya record, Kielhorn's List of the Inscriptions of Southern India, Epi. Ind., vol. 7, appendix, No. 563.
page 477 note 2 For previous remarks on the early and later history of the Śaka, era, see this Journal, 1910, p. 818Google Scholar; 1913, p. 987.
page 477 note 3 Varāhamihira also mentions it by name, without dates in it, in his Bṛihat-Saṁhitā, 8. 20, 21; 13. 3.
page 478 note 1 Ed. Dvivedi, Sudhakara, Benares (1902), p. 407, verses 7, 8.Google Scholar
page 478 note 2 Ed. Dvivedi, Sudhakara, Benares (1886), p. 10Google Scholar, verse 59; p. 50, verse 18.
page 478 note 3 Kielhorn's Southern List, as above, No. 3. I set aside, of course, various Śaka dates, ranging from a.d. 248 to 495, which are put forward in spurious records, some of the Gaṅga series and others from other sources: no value attaches to them.
page 478 note 4 For these eleven dates see Kielhorn's List of the Dates of the Śaka Era in Inscriptions in Ind. Ant., vol. 24, p. 181Google Scholar, Nos. 14 and 16 to 15. Nos. 1 to 12 and 15 are rightly marked by him as spurious, and come from long after the time with which we are concerned: No. 13 is the Bādāmi date of Śaka 500, a.d. 578, mentioned just above.
page 479 note 1 These are:—(1) The Harivaṁśa, Jain, Śaka 705Google Scholar; Ind. Ant., vol. 15, p. 141Google Scholar, and Peterson, 's Fourth Report on Sanskrit MSS., extracts, p. 176Google Scholar: (2) the Jayadhavalaṭīkā, , Śaka 759Google Scholar; JBBRAS, vol. 18, p. 226Google Scholar: and (3) the Uttara-Purāṇa, Śaka 820 (current): Ind. Ant., vol. 12, p. 217Google Scholar, and Bhandarkar, 's Report on Sanskṛit MSS. for 1883–1884, pp. 429, 430.Google Scholar
page 479 note 2 Kielhorn's Southern List, as above, No. 713. This, moreover, is from Mysore; as also are twelve out of the next fourteen such instances, ranging from a.d. 1012 (No. 717) to a.d. 1114 (Nos. 783, 786).
page 479 note 3 Mr. Narasimhacfear has not failed to notice this word purā, but has sought to explain it away as meaning “incessantly”, with the sense, it must be supposed, that Sarvanandin wrote his copy of the work straight away at one sitting, or at any rate without laying it aside in favour of any other duties. It is difficult to think that anyone will be found to endorse such a rendering, which seems to be really based on some confusion with pūra, pūram, ‘filling, making full’, whence we have in Marāṭhī purā, ‘complete, entire; fully, thoroughly’: the word purā is too well established as meaning in Sanskṛit, narrative ‘before, formerly, of old’.Google Scholar
page 481 note 1 See Bhandarkar, 's Report on Sanskrit MSS. for the year 1883–1884, p. 322.Google Scholar
page 481 note 2 Loc. cit., line 17. The words are:—Vikramāt 477 Valabhyāṁ Sīlāditya-uparōdhēna Śatruṁjaya-māhātmyaṁ Dhanēśvarasūriṇā kṛitaṁ. The term uparōdha is rather puzzling: but it seems to be indicated as meaning an importunate or forceful form of abhyarthanā, ‘asking, requesting’, by the parallel passage in the prose version of Dhanēśvara's book, made in 1781 by Haṁsaratna and called Śatruṁjayamāhātmyōllēkha, where we have:— Śrī-Śatrumjay-ōddhāra-kāraka-Surāshṭra-dēśādhipati-śrī-Śīlāditya-nṛipasy = ābhyarthanayā …. Dhanēśvarasūribhis …. śrī - Śatruṁjaya - māhātmyaṁ kṛitaṁ. I am indebted to Dr. Barnett for this extract from Weber, 's Berlin Catalogue, vol. 2, part 3, p. 1072.Google Scholar
page 481 note 3 See Kielhorn, in Ind. Ant., vol. 20, p. 405.Google Scholar
page 483 note 1 See Kielhorn's List of the Saka Dates in Inscriptions, Ind. Ant., vol. 24, p. 183Google Scholar, Nos. 23, 24; and for the full details see Barth's Inscriptions du Cambodge, pp. 68, 74. The first of them gives the sign (but not the nakshatra) for the moon also: the second gives her nakshatra (and not the sign). An earlier record, of a.d. 622, also from Cambodia (No. 19 in the same List), gives both the nakshatra and the sign for the moon, but does not mention the planets.
page 483 note 2 See Bṛihat-Saṁhitā, , 15. 28.Google Scholar
page 483 note 3 There are various indications that the mean places are the right ones to take for the planets for even a long time after the date with which we are concerned. And Professor Jacobi, examining the published result in 1910, told me that on the day mentioned above, by their true longitudes, Saturn was in Śravaṇa, having left Uttara-Ashāḍhā fifty-two days earlier, and Jupiter was in Aśvinī, not coming to Bharaṇī until twenty-eight days later. It thus seems clear that Professor Jha worked for the mean longitudes; and quite rightly.
page 484 note 1 In both cases, however, it would be exceptional. The inscriptional records show that it was almost always the custom to cite the signs for the planets, just as is done now in the columns for remarks and in the horoscopic tables which are given in Hindū almanacs.
page 484 note 2 The idea in doing so seems to have been that Vṛisha is Justice or Virtue (Dharma) personified as a Bull or as Śiva's Bull, and that Yama also is a personification of Dharma. But there is no indication that Vṛisha is found as a name of Yama. However, that is beside the question.
page 485 note 1 Compare note 3 on p. 483 above.