Epigraphia Indica Vol 01

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India

Page 18

. PALLAVA GRANT OF SIVASKANDAVARMAN.
a garden in Chillarekakoduṁka, the income from which was to be divided in the manner specified, of two pieces of land in Apitti, and of some serfs. The writer of the grant was the privy councillor (rahasádhikata) Bhattisarman, who is called Koliválabho. jaka, i.e., the Inamdar of Kolivala. It is for the present impossible to say how the donor is connected with the other Pallava kings, known from the sasanas as yet published, or to fix the period when he reigned. With respect to the latter point I am, however, inclined to assume with Mr. Fleet (Indian Antiquary, vol. IX, p. 101), that the kings, named in the Prakrit grants, belong to an earlier time than those who issued the Sanskrit basanas. The want of accurate maps makes it impossible for me to identify the villages and the district named.
In spite of these drawbacks our grant possesses a very great importance. Like the great Nanaghat inscription of Satakanni's widow Nayanikå and like the Elliot grant of Vijayabuddhavarman's queen, it shows that the use of Prakrit in the older inscriptions is not due to the influence of Buddhism, but that in early times Prakrit was the official language of the Indian kings, while the use of Sanskrit was still confined to the Brahmanical schools. Our grant and the other two documents mentioned were issued by adherents of the Brahmanical faith. The use of Sanskrit in the comminatory verses, included in the Elliot grant, and in the mangala at the end of our grant, show that the said language was not unknown to the persons who composed the text. If, nevertheless, the chief portions of the grants are written in Prakrit, some reason, not of a religious nature, must have dictated the use of the vulgar idiom. This reason, I think, can only have been official usage. The results of the recent epigraphic and linguistic studies are most unfavourable to the theory that there was in India once a golden age during which kings, priests, and peasants spoke the language of Pånini. They rather tend to show that the classical Sanskrit is a Brahmanical modification of the, or a, northern dialect, elaborated by the grammatical schools, which very slowly and in historical times gained ascendancy throughout the whole of India and among all the educated classes. Our inscription is an important link in a long chain of arguments supporting this view. Its full importance can, however, only be made apparent in a comprehensive discussion of the history of the Aryan languages of India.
TRANSCRIPT.
PLATE I.
Siddham || 1 Kaunchipurâ 2 rajadbirajo 8 amham
nggitthomavajapeyassamedhayaji dhammamaha Bharaddâyo Pallavana Sivakhandavamo
visayesavattharajakumarasena pati
Plate IIa. 4 roţthikamâdabinudesâdhikatâdike
gAmagamabhojake 5 vallavegovallave amachche åranadhikate gumike fûthike 6 neyike anne vi cha ambapesaņaprayutte sameharamtaka.
7 bhadamanusåņa [kadh....o] pâriharam vitarama chattha dani This word stands on the margin, on level with the L. 6. Read aranddhikate. second line.
L. 6. Only the right side of na in pesana is preserved. L 1. One would have expected aggitthoma'.
L. 7. The letters placed between brackets are very doubtful, L. 8. The tha of rattha looks exactly like that of agitthoma. with the exception of the last vowel; pridrah is particu L. 4. The i of raffAika is very faint; read adhdabika. larly plain.