Epigraphia Indica Vol 06

SR No.: 032560
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: E Hultzsch
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India
Publication Year: 1998
Total Pages: 482
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 24 MB

Page 235

194
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. VI.
But we do not find it used in that general manner, at any rate in the Rashtrakuta records. In those records, as far as they have been considered at present, we perhaps find the biruda Śrivallabha suggested in the case of Krishna I.; but, if so, it is put forward for him in verse, in a very unusual and inconclusive fashion, and not in a record of his own time. We have it first apparently established' in the case of Govinda III., by the formal prose passages of his own records; and it is certainly used to denote him in a verse in the Baroda grant of his time. We next find it put forward, in verse, for his son Amôghavarsha I.; but this is done in a late record of A.D. 915, and under circumstances which suggest that it was used simply as a convenient metrical substitute for his formal biruda Lakshmivallabha, which, though synonymous in meaning, is not the same appellation in form. We meet with it next in the case of Indra III., in the formal prose passage of one of the records of his time. We find it last used to denote Krishna III., in a verse which stands in his records of A.D. 940 and 959. And we thus have it established as a distinctive official appellation,- by formal prose passages, which, as has already been said, are far more decisive in any points of this kind than the verses are, only in the cases of Govinda III. (apparently) and Indra III.
From this, we might conclude that, in a Rashtrakûța record referable to about the last quarter of the eighth century A.D., the biruda Śrivallabha must denote Govinda III., for whom we have the date of A.D. 794 from his Paithan grant. And, if we accept the indication that is given in the formal prose passage in the Rådhanpur grant of A.D. 807, it certainly was a well established biruda of him, and an important and distinctive one because there, and in the corresponding passage in the Paithan grant of A.D. 794, it takes the place that is occupied by his proper name in the Wanf grant of A.D. 807.
Nevertheless, Srivallabha was not the principal and most distinctive appellation of Govinda III. As we have already seen, in later times he was remembered only as Jagattanga. A verse in the Nausârî grant of A.D. 817 seems clearly to single out Prithivivallabha as his special vallabha-appellation. But even that was not his most distinctive appellation. His most distinctive biruda during the earlier part of his reign was, evidently, Prabhutavarsha. Even the Nilgund inscription of A.D. 866 of his successor's reign,-written at a time when there was, plainly, a preference for speaking of him as Jagattunga, tells us that he was Prabhutavarsha, who became Jagattunga; and the only other of his birudas that it mentions, is Kirtinârâyana. In the records of his own time, the biruda Prabhutavarsha occupies a prominent position in the Paithan, Want, and Radhanpur grants, and also in even the Tôrkhêdê grant; standing, in all of them, before either his proper name or the biruda Śrivallabha, and, in the Tôrkhêdê grant, also before the introduction of the biruda Jagattunga. In the grant of A.D. 804 from the Kanarese country, the biruda Prabhutavarsha is used, and no other, with his proper name. The same is the case in an undated inscription in the Shimoga district, Mysore, which refers itself to the reign of a Prabhûtavarsha-Govindarasa, and is, no doubt, to be referred to his time. And an inscription at Shisuvinhâl in the Bankåpar taluka, Dhârwâr district, which can only be referred to his time, mentions him, as the reigning king, as " the favourite of Fortune and the Earth, the Maharájádhiraja, the Paramésvara, the Bhatára, Prabhutavarsha," without presenting any other biruda, and without even finding it necessary to give his proper name.
And there are records in Mysore, which shew unmistakably that Dhruva was distinctively known by the biruda of Srivallabha, at least as well as was his son Govinda III. One of them is an inscription at Matakere in the Heggaḍadêvankôte tâluka, Mysore
1 See page 173 above, and note 2.
Ep. Carn. Vol. IV. Introd. p. 10, and note 1.
Not published; I quote from an ink-impression. The record is so much damaged that it can hardly be edited; but the first two lines are fortunately quite legible.