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No. 33.]
SINDA INSCRIPTION AT BHAIRANMATTI.
231
Śaka-Samvat 911 by mistake for 912 (expired), there was a Sinda prince named Pulikala, son of Kammara or Kammayyarasa and Sagarabbarasi; to Pulikala and Rêvakabbe there was born the Mahasamanta Någaditya, Nágâtya, or Någåtiyarasa; to Nâgâditya and Poleyabbarasi there was born Polasinda; and to Polasinda and Bijjaladevi, daughter of the Khåndava Mandalesvara, there was born the Mahamandalesvara Sevyarnsa. This latter person is mentioned as a vassal of the Western Chalukya king Sômêsvara II. And this fixes the period A.D. 1069 to 1076 as the time when the inscription was put on the stone. But the antique expression rajyan-geyye, in line 4, shews that the opening part of it was taken from some record which had been drawn up more or less synchronously with the date that is given in connection with Taila II. and Pulikala. This part of the record registers the fact that in some unspecified year, on a Sunday combining the uttardyana-sankranti or winter solstice with the Vyatîpåta yôga, the Mahásdmanta Någâditya had granted to a priest named Paratraya-Simharásibhatta a field, measuring one thousand mattars by the measuring-rod of Pattiya-Mattaüra, at the village of Kiriya-Siriura, and that the asuvana, or tax on the field, was twelve gadyanas.
The second part of the inscription, from line 50 to the end, registers a grant, at a village named Puradakéri, which the same Mahasamanta Nâgâditya had made to a priest named Téjórasipandita in the time of the Western Châlukya king Jayasimha II., when the latter was reigning at Kollipake, in the Srimukha samvatsara, Saka-Samvat 955 (expired), = A.D. 1033-34;7 and it adds that this priest, who was the Acharya of the god Sindêsvara, effected some repairs to the temple of that god.
A special point of interest in this record is the legendary account as to the origin of the Sinda family, and of its name. These Sindas claimed to belong to the Nagavamsa or race of hooded serpents,- to carry the naga-dhvaja or phani-pataka, i.e. the banner which line 41 of the text explains as bearing representations of the Naga kings Ananta, Våsugi (more properly Vasuki), and Takshaka,- to use the wyághra-lánchhana or tiger-crest, and to have the hereditary title of “lord of Bhôgåvati, the best of towns," which place, in Hindú mythology, was the capital of the Naga king Vasuki in Rasåtala, one of the seven divisions of Påtals or the subterranean regions. And, by way of accounting for all these attributes, and for the family-name, the record tells us that the eponymous founder of the family was & certain "long-armed ” Sinda, a human son of the serpent-king Dharanêndra, born at Ahichchhatra in the region of the river Sindhu, i.e. the Indus, and reared by a tiger. This Sinda is said to have married the daughter of a Kadamba prince, and to have had by ber three sons, who established the family of the kings of the Sinda race. They appear to have been the first of a line of thirty-one successive rulers. And after them, at unspecified intervals, there came another prince named Sinda, and then Kammara or Kammayyarasa, the father of Pulikala.
The eponymous " long-armed Sinda" figures in records of also another branch of the Sinda family; for instance, in an inscription of about A.D. 1165 at Harihar (Páli, Sanskrit, and old.
By the mean-sign system of the cycle, the Vikrita or Fikriti samvatsara began on the 18th April, A.D. 948, in saka-Samvat 911 current, and ended on the 14th April, A. D. 989, in Saka-Samvat 912 current ( 911 expired). But that system had then gone out of use in the part of the country to which this record belongs, and had been superseded by the southern luni-solar system, according to which the samvatsara in question coincided with SakaSamvat 913 current ( 912 expired). -- Further details of the date, the month, etc. - are not given.
This name seems to represent the Kanarese huli, ' tiger,' and kilu, foot or leg.
* This seems to be a family or territorial designation, rather than a personal name. And, in fact, the dictionaries give the word khandara as the name of a region.
• This must be the modern Hatti-Mattúr in the Karajgi taluka, Dharwår district.
• This must have been a village, now non-existent, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bhairanmatti- possibly a bamlet of, or offshoot from, the modern Širúr, which is about seven miles to the south-west.
• The maps do not shew any village of this name anywhere in the neighbourhood of Bhairanmatti. 7 In this date, again, no further details are given. * The passage gives one of the few instances of the word kadamba being written with the lingual d.
