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No. 6.]
THREE RECORDS IN THE BANGALORE MUSEUM.
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of the Western Gangas, and it is found above their records at Biļidr, Peggu-ûr, Ky&tanahalli, and Tayalür.
It is probable that Vijaya-Narasimhavarman represented the main line of the Gangas; and he was very likely a lineal descendant of Satyasraya-Dhruvarâja-Indravarman.
And it is becoming tolerably certain that Śivamâra I. and his descendants did not belong to the main line, but were the hereditary princes of the Konga!nad eight-thousand province. This would explain why Sivamâra I. and Sripurusha-Muttarasa called themselves "the Konguni king," and why their descendants assumed the appellation Konganivarman, Konguņivarman, Konginivarman, or Kongaļivarman, from which there was evolved, by the persons who fabricated the spurious grants, the name of the fictitious "Kongaņivarman, the first Ganga," as the imaginary founder of the line.
As regards the spurious grants, only ten, including the Sâți grant, were known when I wrote about them in Vol. III. of this Journal, p. 159 ff.; I dealt there with only some of the features in respect of which they have to be criticised; I could not examine any of the details, except the date, of the Hosûr grant, purporting to be dated A.D. 762, because I was not aware that the text of it, with a lithograph, had been published in Mr. Rice's article on "the Ganga kings" in the Madras Journ. Lit. and Science, 1878, p. 138 ff.; and, similarly for want of a lithograph or impressions, I was not able to examine any of the details of the Bangalore Museum grant, which purports to have been issued in the third year of Darvinita. Since then, some more spurious copper-plate grants of the same series have been published. And there are others already known, the publication of which is awaited. In the final examination of them, one interesting line of inquiry will be to collate the texts, examine all the peculiarities of vocabulary and diction, discover the locality in which these curious documents, or at least the majority of them, were fabricated, and trace the order in which they were concocted, and so, perhaps, the steps by which the fictitious pedigree was built up. In connection with all this, it will be desirable to see what real equivalents can be found for the false dates recorded in some of them, and in certain other records of the same nature connected with them : on this point, my present view is that, while some of the false dates are no doubt altogether imaginary, others of them may have been arrived at by calculations more or less correct, and others, again, give the true details of the dates on which the records were fabricated, or of dates, close to those dates, taken from almanacs accessible to the forgers, falsified in respect of the years by striking off an even number of cycles of the sixty-year system, or by similar means, in order to present a semblance of antiquity; and it is an
that branch had the crest of a tiger and a deer; and one of the branches at Bagalkot had the tiger-crest. The Sindas claimed to belong to the Nága race. And a statement referable to the eleventh century A.D., and to be accepted for what it may be worth, would allot the Sêndrakas themselves --(whom it mentions as Sendras)- to the lineage of the Bhujagêndras or serpent kings (id. p. 292).
i See the lithographs in Ind. Ant. Vol. VI. p. 101, Coorg Ingers. p. 7, and Ep. Carn. Vol. III., Sr. 147 and Ma. 14.-In pointing out (above, Vol. V. p. 165, note 4) an objection to treating the Tâyalar record (Md. 14) AS "an intrusive Pallays inscription," I omitted to notice the fact that the emblem of the elephant proves conclusively that it is not such.
This exact expression occurs in an inscription at Kadlapura, Ep. Carn, Vol. 111., Nj. 110, which purports to be of A.D. 1148. It is extremely doubtful whether it is even a genuine record of that period. But, if we assume that it is genuine as far as it goes, then, of course, in putting forward Saka-Samvat 25 expired. - A.D. 103-104. As the date of "Kongapivarman, the first Gaoga," it simply put forward, in good faith, a false statement Bucoensfully palmed off on the officials of the period with a view to setting up a previous grant of the village. Historically, as regards the Gangas, the record is worthless; except in perhaps shewing that, by A.D. 1148, the date of A.D. 108-104 had come to be connected with the imaginary Kohgapivarman.
Ep. Carn. Vol. III., Md. 113, the Hallegere grant, purporting to be dated A.D. 713, and Nj. 122, the Tagadaru grant, purporting to be dated A.D. 267, and Vol. IV., Yd, 60, the Galigêkere grant, Sr. 160, the Gafijam grant, and probably (see page 66 above, note 1) Hg. 4, the Sangüru grant, all of them with lithographs.
