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No. 22.)
VAKKALERI PLATES OF KIRTIVARMAN II.
201
single letter may be read with absolute certainty. The characters belong to the same variety of the southern alphabet which is used, e.g., in the Togarcháda and Karşûl district plates of the Western Chalakya Vinayaditya, Ind. Ant. Vol. VI. pp. 86 and 89, and Plates. As regards individual letters, the chief point to note is that, except in the akshara ld, in which we have the full form of 1 of the older inscriptions, the letter ! is every where denoted by the siga which in the earlier Western Chalakya inscriptions, so far as I know, is employed for tbe subscript I only. For other test-letters, such as kh, j and b, the ordinary earlier types are used throughout. The inscription contains no sign of punctuation, nor any form of a final consonant. The size of the letters is about it. -The language of the inscription is Sanskrit, and, with the exception of a well-known verse in praise of the god Vishnu in linee 1 and 2 and three benedictive and imprecatory verses ascribed to Vyasa, in lines 72-76, the whole is in prose. From the word frimatari in line 2 to djñápayati in line 61 the text forms a single sentence, the construction of which is not always correct, and in which occur two forms which are contrary to the strict rules of grammar. In respect of orthography, it will suffice to draw attention to the use of the Draviļian in palidhvaja, 11. 20, 27 and 33, and in some proper names the most important of which are Kalabhra, Koraļa, Ohóla, and Sinhala, and to the fact that visarga before surd guttural and labial letters has mostly been changed to the jihvamailíya and upadhmaniya, and has nearly always been assimilated to a following & and s. In general, the text is remarkably free from clerical mistakes.
The inscription is one of the Western Chalukya Maharajadhiraja Param&svara Bhattaraka Kirtivarman (01.] Satyasraya, styled Sriprithivivallabha, the favourite of fortune and the earth,' whose genealogy is given in lines 2-59. It records (in lines 61-69) that, when six-hundred and seventy-nine Saks years had gone by, in the eleventh year of his reign, on the full-moon tithi of the month of Bhadrapada, while encamped at the village of Bhandaragaviţtage on the northern bank of the river Bhimarathi, the king, at the request of a certain Dôsiraja, granted the village of Sulliyûr, together with Nengiyûr and Nandivalli, situatod in the midst of the villages Tâmaramuge, Pinungal, Kiruvalli and Bâļavuru, on the southern bank of the river Aradore, in the Pånungal-visheye, to Madhavasarman, the son of Krishnabarman and son's son of the student of the Rig- and Yajurvédas Vishnugarman, of the Kåmakayans gôtra. The charter (according to lines 76 and 77) was written by the Mahasamdhivigrahika Anivärita Dhananjaya, styled Punyavallabha, the favourite of religions merit.'
The date does not admit of verification ; for Saka-Samvat 679 expired it would correspond to the 2nd September A.D. 757. Of the localities mentioned, Bhandaragavittage, according to Dr. Fleet, must be Bhandar-Kawte' in the Sholapur district-the Kowteh' of the map-on a stream which flows into the Sina, which again flows into the Bhima (the Bhimarathi of the inscription); Penangal is the modern Hångal in the Dharwår district, and Bålavuru seems to be the modern Baļür, three miles south by east of Hångal; the other places have now disappeared.
Bee Prof. Bühler's Indische Palaographia, Plate VII. col. xvi. The sigo No. 18, given there as Aka, is really ; and the sign No. 19 is tga, not dga. Under No. 2, the sign for d is omitted (100 l. 87 of the inscription); on the other hand, the form of pha, given under No. 28, does not ooour in the inscription.
Compare, 6.9., the subscript of the akılara la of the word alfablona in the last line of the Togarchedu platou, Ind. Ant. Vol. VI. p. 87. This sign for i differs from the sign for which is used throughout in the Naudet plates of the Gujarat Chalukya Yupardja Sryksraya-SllAdity, and very frequently in the Surat plates of the same; e Jour. Bo. 41. Soo. Vol. XVI. p. 2, and Plates, and Vienna Or. Congress, Arian section, p. 225, and Platen.
The sign for in labdhod, 1. 56, is open on the left (or proper right) sido ; see above, p. 119. • Atmaadtkritya in line 14, and hast&kritya in line 48.
• This, perhape, is the Aniverita-punya vallabbs who wrote the Klacht inscription of Vikramaditya (probably 11. the father of Kirtirarman II.); see above, Vol. III. p. 360.
2 D
