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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. III.
be placed in the eighth or ninth century, A.D.,- Bay, pending more precise discoveries, somewhere in the period A.D. 760 to 850. His existence and period are proved, not by the spurious grants, but by stone inscriptions at Talakad, Sivârs, and Sivarpațna, -- unquestionably genuine, but unfortunately not dated, of which Mr. Rice sent me photographs with the object of inducing my admission, which I give without hesitation, of the genuine existence of at any rate one of the persons named in the spurious records. The Talakad inscription, which speaks of Sripurasha-Mattarasa as the Maharaja Prithuvi-Kongaņi-Muttarasa-Sripurusha, and describes him as reigning af paramount sovereign, would have been, in itself, quite sufficient to establish him as a historical personage. And, being engraved in remarkably fine characters which are attributable to any period about A.D. 800, it makes it quite possible that the fabricator of the Hogar and Nagamaigula grants had available, or hit off, true dates for him. But it contains no hint of the genealogy that is given in the copper-plate grants; nor do the others; and so, of course, these records do not substantiate either that genealogy, or any of the supposed facts that are stated in the course of it. There is, indeed, one other name, which may perhaps be placed before that of Sripurusha-Muttarasa : for, a genuine but undated stone inscription at Débar in the Nañjangud taluka, Mysore, engraved in well-formed characters of just about the same period, mentions a Sivamâra, and, without connecting any title with his name, describes him, also, & reigning as paramount sovereign; and the existence of a king named Śivamâra, either just before or just after Sripurusha-Mattarisa, and referable to the same lineage with him, is, therefore, also proved. But this record, again, contains no genealogical information, and so it does not help us to decide whether this Sivamára is the person who according to the Sadi grant 3 was the father, and according to the Hosur and Nagamangala grants was the grandfather, of Sripurusha-Mattarasa, or whether he is the person whom the Saại grant represents as a son of Sripurusha-Mattarasa. Thus, the existence of one at least, and perhaps two, of the persons named in the spurious charters purporting to belong to the earlier period, and referable approximately to the period that is made out for one of them by those charters, is now established. And, taking the later period as represented by the spurious Sûdi grant, a genuine but updated stone inscription from Doddahundi in Mysore, now in the Bangalore Museum, establishes the existence, in just about the same period, but probably
It includes the old form of the b; as also does one of the Sivarpatna records. I do not find the later form of the kh or the d in any of the records in question, four in number. I would make here a remark on an incidental point of some importance. The photographs auffice to shew the general standard of these records well enough. But they do not represent the originals faithfully and intelligibly; the reason being that, for photography, the letters were filled in, either with paint or with whitewash, by hand. This practice cannot be too strongly condemned; it distorts the characters, introduces mistakes, and frequently renders it quite impossible to decide what the originals really contain. The ancient records, when studied from reproductions, can be properly appreciated and understood only from reproductions which are purely mechanical
Here I write on the authority of an ink-impression, which Mr. Rige kindly sent for my inspection. The impression is not very clear ; but the record appears not to include the letters kh and 8 in either forin.
See the Table on page 177 below.
• The name Sivamara occurs also in one of the Sivarpatos inscriptions of Sripurusha-Muttaras. But here, again, there is nothing to help us to decide the question of identity.--Mr. Rice has also sent me photographs of a copper-plate cbarter which purports to have been issued by the Sivamára who is represented as either the father or the grandfather of Sriporusha-Muttarnsa. It styles him the Mahardja Sivamara-Prithivi-Kongapi. And it purports to have been issued in the month Jyêshtha (May-June), falling in A.D. 713, of the thirty-fourth year of bis reign, Saka-Samvat 635 expired. But this, again, is a spurious record. Like some of the other records, it purporte to have been written by Vibvakarman; and it seems, as a matter of fact, to have been written by the very person who wrote the Nagamangala record. And, as regards the palmographie test of the two specially tell tale charac. ters, though the old form of the b is used throughout, the later form of the kb is used all through, except in one solitary instance.
"I write bere on the autbority of photograph which Dr. Hultzsch kindly sent me. This record contains the old form of the kh; the letter b does not appear in it at all. As regards goueral features, the characters weer slightly later than those of the genuine records of Sripurusha-Mattaruur and Sivainara.
