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No. 16.]
SOME RASHTRAKUTA RECORDS.
167
(length) on (each) forty lengths; (bet) below thirty, and above two hundred, half a length. This shall continue !
(L. 10) - Whosoever destroys this will associate himself with people who kill a thousand brown cows of Baranåsi!
The appellations of the Rashtrakuțas of Malkhôd. This study is the outcome of some inquiries that were commenced with a view to determining exactly who may be the king Srivallabha, to whose time the Lakshmêshwar inscription, C. above, refers itself. For that purpose, it was necessary only to go as far as Amoghavarsha I. But some other points of interest presented themselves during the inquiry, in connection with the proper names of the kings as well as their birudas and other appellations ; and it seemed useful and convenient to go through the whole dynasty. I am not sure that I have quite exhausted the subject; it is difficult to do that in dealing with so many records, edited in different works and not arranged chronologically, and some of them published in Någari characters which do not adapt themselves to capitals, thick type, and other devices for catching the eye quickly. But, at any rate, I am able to put forward results that can be easily completed, at any future time, in respect of any few details that may have been overlooked here.
I may add that I commenced the inquiry with the expectation that the results would prove that the Srivallabha of the record in question, and of an important passage which furnishes a date, could only be Gðvinda III. The steps by which we are driven to a different conclusion on this point, will disclose themselves in due course.
Two general remarks may as well be made here. One is that, for any particular point, it is usually sufficient to refer to only that passage, the earliest in date, which first brings it forward ; the value of a statement is seldom, if ever, in any way enhanced by the mere repetition of it in successive records which do no more than reproduce the exact words of earlier records. The other is that, in matters of technical detail, prose records in general, and in particular the formal preambles of the prose passages which introdace the special subject of each copper-plate charter, are obviously of more importance than any preliminary verses, in which flights of fancy were naturally permissible and were plainly sometimes indulged in, and in which absolute accuracy might at any time be made subordinato by an unskilful composer to metrical and other similar necessities.
For a complete list of the Rashtrakůțas of Malkhôd and of the first Gujarat branch, for use in connection with the remarks made in the following pages, reference may be made to the Table given by me in Vol. III. above, opposite page 54, or to the same Table in my Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts (in the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I. Part II.), opposite page 386.
The first paramount king in the dynasty of the Rashtrakūtas of Malkhôd was Dantidurga. Of his time, we have the Samangad grant, issued in A.D. 754. And this record, it may be mentioned, opens the pedigree with his great-grandfather Govinda I., and thus carries the family back as far as do any of the subsequent records, with the exception of the inscription
Ie, apparently, ball length on any piece of less than thirty lengths, one length on each forty lengths up to two hundred, and then balf a length on each furty a love that pun.ber.
