Epigraphia Indica Vol 21

SR No.: 032575
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hirananda Shastri
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India
Publication Year: 1931
Total Pages: 398
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

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176
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XXI.
also in lithic records of an early period (cl. The Udiyāvara Inscription of Vijayāditya). The significance of certain incomes, the halves of which were granted to the donee, viz., kolagur pe peljavasi, kānasoppu and vāral is not quite clear. I may suggest, however, that kolaguppe may denote a heap (kuppe) made up of the share due to the state on every kola (a measure of capacity) of the produce. Javasi may mean a tax in kind on javasa (Skt. yavasa) meaning meadow grass; peljavasi would then be a tax levied on big (meadows of) straw. Kāna or kän means forest and soppu means foliage in Kanarese. Kānasoppu may therefore be a tax on the foliage of the forest used by the cultivators for manure and other purposes. In Tamil vāral means spoil'; and it is not unlikely that it had the same connotation in Kanarese. The words karsa-pindan' and kombe-gārodam are obscure and do not occur in any of the Kanarese inscriptions so far published.
The orthography of the record does not call for any remarks except that -entu has been engraved for-entu in line 15, that the name of the donor is written as Gopalao instead of Gopālao fn line 16, that ha has been written for ha in lines 5 and 18 and that there appears to be a superfluous anusvāra at the end of the word padeyaṁ in line 16. These mistakes are apparently due to the engraver.
The donor of the grant was the Pallava chief Gopāladēva who also bore the surname Vikramāditya-Satyāśraya (1.1). It is clear that he belongs to the well-known lineage of the Pallavas as he is twice described as Pallavarāja (ll. 1 and 6) and, as noted above, uses the lion-crest of the Pallavas. The phrase Kaikēya-vamé-odbhav-oddhata-pradhāna-purusha (1. 2) might only indicate that he was connected with the Kaikēyas probably on his mother's side. In line 5 we are told that he was the son of Chandamabāsēna and that he was the lord of the city Payvegundu. The record does not tell us anything more about the donor beyond bestowing some ordinary praise on him. The object of the grant was the equal share (i.e., half) of the village Kāsampalli, (1.9) along with certain incomes, the details of which are given (11. 14-16), to Singitale-Panyāra of the Härita-götra (1. 8). Similar instances of the endowment of a moiety of the taxes (ardhadāna) also occur in Nos. VI and VIII of the inscriptions of Udiyāvara. As we learn from line 17 that the village had six hundred pieces of land the portion granted must have consisted of three hundred pieces. The grant was made in the presence of the mantri, the puröhita, the frikarana the one-thousand and the six-hundred. The last two were probably the mahājanas (the Brahmanical Assembly) and either the nādu (non-Brahmanical Assembly) or the nagara of the place. As Kāsampaļļi appears to be a village it is likely that it did not have the nagara or the merchant guild. The reference to such bodies merely by their numbers is not uncommon.
1 Above, Vol. IX, p. 23.
I am indebted for this suggestion to Rao Bahadur R. Narasimhachar.
* Since karsa-pindan is specified as 128 it appears to me that it denotes the gift of a lump sum (pinda). If BO, karsa may be taken to be the tadbhava of the Sanskrit word karsha -karahapana). Karsapindam would then mean the karshapanas paid in a lump unlike the taxes noted above, of which the donce was to receive a half. This explanation seems to gain strength by the use of a somewhat similar expression in an inscription, of the 11tb year of the Chalukya king Pratápachakravarti Jagadēkamalla II (No. 503 of the Madras Epigraphical Collection for 1915), the passage runs a lanna tohiya manneyavan kinikey-dya-daya sarv-dya-buddhi narahath-prati han. neradu padinama pind adanudgi od umbuffu dhard-pārvoakan madi koffu. Here the twelve gadya nus (gold coin) were granted as a lump sum.
. Aboru, Vol. IX, pp. 21 and 23.
. An insoription of about the 7th or 8th century at Aihole (Ind. Ans., Vol. VIII, p. 287) calls the five hundred mahajanas of the place as simply the five-hundred'. The mahajanas of Chirohill in the Gadag Taluka who are stated to be fifty-six in a Rashtrakūta record of Saka 819 (No. 104 of the Bombay-Karnatak Collection for 1920-27) are referred to merely as the bfty-six in another lithio record of the same place (No. 101 of the same collection). Similarly while the one thousand mahajanas of Lokkigundi are designated as such in an inscription (No.61 of the same colleotion) of that place, another inscription (No. 52 of the same collection) describes them as the one thousand'.