________________
No. 47.]
RECORDS OF THE SOMAVAMSI KINGS OF KATAK.
337
As we have already seen, Yayati-Kesari, representing Yayati-MahA-Sivagupta, is mistakenly described as the first of his dynasty, and is placed at least five centuries before the earliest date to which he can possibly belong; and Janamêjaya-Kesari, representing his father and predecessor Janamêjaya-Mahl-Bhavagupta I., is placed nearly three centuries after him, in the period A.D. 754 to 763. Chodaganga (A.D. 1132 to 1152) is possibly a historical person, placed not very far from the period to which he really belonged; he may be identified with AnantavarmaChodagangadēva of the family of the later Eastern Gangas, lords of Trikalinga or the three Kalingas, who was anointed to the succession in A.D. 1078, and for whom we have also the date of A.D. 1118-19 (Ind. Ant. Vol. XVIII. pp. 162, 166): one of the records of this king tells us that he replaced the fallen lord of Utkala, i.e. Orissa, in his kingdom (ibid. p. 171); and he seems, therefore, to have played some important part in the local history. But all that precedes, resolves itself into simply this:--The object in view was the magnifying of the antiquity and importance of the temple of Jagannatha at Part, and of all its surroundings and connections. The persons who set about doing this, by concocting the annals, could not well go back to before the commencement of the Kaliyuga, - the present age. But they felt bound to go back as far as that point. And they had before them two other well-known epochs - the initial points of the Vikrama and the Saka eras,- and, apparently, the date, not much displaced, of a fairly recent king, Anantavarma-Chodagangadêva. They thus had three periods to fill up with names, B.C. 3102 or 3101 to B.C. 58 or 57; B.C. 58 or 57 to A.D. 77 or 78; and A.D.77 or 78 to A.D. 1100 or thereabouts. The last of these periods, being the best filled one, seems to have been taken in hand by them first; and, - except for the alleged occupation by the Yavanas for a hundred and forty-six years, from A.D. 328 to 474, as regards the real meaning of which see farther on,- they filled it, partly with a few names which are obviously inventions, and partly with a number of names, connected mostly with reigns of reasonable and admissible duration, which present no appearance of antiquity and cannot by any means be accepted for the period to which they are allotted, but may very possibly be names of real rulers of later date,- say of the twelfth century and onwards, probably many of them petty princes contemporaneous with each other. But the accounts for this period do not even agree with each other; for (see page 340 below), another compilation makes the Kesari dynasty begin in B.C. 144 or 132 and end in A.D. 553 or 565,- places next an isolated king of the 'Chourang dynasty' named 'Udi Patchourang,' who reigned for ninety years, and then a line of kings belonging to the Solar Race, which lasted till A.D. 1324,- and makes the Gangavamsa dynasty begin only then. The interval from the commencement of the Vikrama era to the commencement of the Saka era was accounted for in the customary traditional manner, with the reigns of a parely fictitious king Vikramaditya and his brother Sakaditya. On the earliest period, legs, trouble was expended. The list was opened with three well-known Paråņic names, which were made to account for 1,294 years; and it was imperfectly eked out with only nine names, which were made to fill the remaining 1,750 years with reigns of almost equally fabulous duration : of these nine names, seven may possibly, like some of the names of the third period, be real names of rulers of the twelfth century and onwards, or, as already suggested, one of these seven may contain an anachronistic and otherwise erroneous reminiscence of the great Buddhist king Agőka; but one, that of Mahendradeva, seems to be a pure invention, to account for the name of a city which is to be allotted to a period about eighteen oenturies later; and the ninth, that of Bhojadeva, is the name of a real king antedated by about twelve centuries. In the whole account, from B.C. 3101 up to the mention of Chôdaganga with the date of A.D. 1132 to 1152, the only historical gleams which can be detected are that (1) the opening of the list
1 It is not made clear whether the datos A.D., allotted to the various kings who are mentioned in the annale, ne taken from Saka dates put forward for each king, or are simply worked out from the lengths of the reigos It the latter is the case, the initial date for the Chodaganga of the annals could easily be made to coincide exactly with the date of the coronation of Anantavarma-Chodagangadáva.
2x
