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No. 6.]
THREE RECORDS IN THE BANGALORE MUSEUM
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purport to be of the time of Satyasraya-(Pulakėsin II.) and the Sendra prince Durgalakti (not dated), and of Vikramaditya II. (dated A.D. 735). And another stone tablet at the same placel contains a record of Vijayaditys (dated A.D. 723), followed by other records of the same king (dated A.D. 730), of Gangakandarpa-(Noļambântaka-Mârasimha II.) (dated, again, A.D. 968-69), and of Vinayaditya (dated A.D. 687). These records, though bearing such very different dates, are all in characters of one and the same period, and were all put on the stones at one and the same time. When I dealt with them, - more than twenty years ago, I believed, and said, that they are in characters of the tenth century A.D.; that is to say, I took them as having been put on the stones in the recorded year A.D. 968-69, in the time of Nolambântaka-Marasimha II. And I too carelessly endorsed that belief in 1894, without examining impressions of them again. That belief was wrong. The characters are of an appreciably later date, and are fairly referable to the second half of the eleventh century A.D. And there is no doubt that these records were put on the stones in connection with the rebuilding of the Jain temples and the restoration of their endowments under the Western Chålukyas of Kalyani, after the end of the Chôļa occupation, and for the purpose of what Sir Walter Elliot has called "the unification of the titles." As regards the historical value of them, it is obvious that the Chalukya records are, at the best, only copies of originals, to be taken for what they may be worth; and, for the present, we need only remark that, with the exception of the record of Satyafraya-(Pulakesin II.) and the Sendra prince Durgasakti, they are plainly based, more or less directly, on original charters which were deciphered intelligently,that they are questionable, as dishonest records, only in so far as the writers of them may have substituted names of villages and grantees, to suit their own purposes, for other names standing in the originals, and that, apparently, the only specially important item in them is the mention of the name Půjyapada, as that of the teacher of the alleged grantee, in the record of A.D. 730. As regards the Ganga records, they are questionable in the same way, as dishonest records, in so far as they may put forward fraudulent claims to property. The one that has been edited in full, includes the first three steps of the fictitious pedigree; and, therefore, it was based, in that portion, either on a spurious record, or on a draft of which the ultimate origin is to be traced to the spurious records. But that fact does not make it itself necessarily a dishonest record; because, by the time when it was put on the stone, the fictitious pedigree had evidently become an accepted story, liable to be quoted in even bona fide records. Even as regards the fictitious pedigree, it makes a mistake, in representing Nolambántaka-Marasimha II. as the younger brother of the imaginary Harivarman of the third generation. This, however, is a detail, of no real importance, which may be accounted for in any way that may seem appropriate. And the only item of special interest, that can be found in the record at present, is the mention of a Jain temple called Mukkaravasati. The important point, for the present, is, that this record was put on the stone about a century later than the date recorded in it, which is a date that fell during the period of NoļambåntakaM&rasimha II., and that, consequently, it does not place in the time of that prince the first attempt to devise the fictitious pedigree.
In the second place, when I formed the conclusions that I presented in 1894, we knew of but very few Western Ganga records, beyond these Lakshmêshwar inscriptions and the spurious
1 Noticed, but not edited in full, Ind. Ant. Vol. VII. p. 111. Above, Vol. III. p. 172, note 4.
Coins of Southern India, p. 114. The possible bearing of this is too complicated & matter to be gone into on the present occasion,
It is mentioned, incidentally, among the boundaries of one of the properties claimed by the record. The mention of it suggests that, at some time before the eleventh century, there was a person named Mukkara, by whom the temple was founded, or after whom it was named. All else that can be said, in, that, if there was such person, he may have been Ganga-(which, however, the record does not assert),-or he may bave belonged to any other family, and that it is highly probable that he was the person from whoin there was evolved the imaginary Mokkara, or Mushkara, the alleged grandfather of Sivamera I., of the spurious grante.
