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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[Vol. VII.
was governing the Purigere district, on the day of the full-moon of the month Vaisakha:
(Line 7) The forty Mahajanas of Elpuņuse, and the Gorava Moni, and the managers of Elamvalli which belongs to the god Mahadeva (Śiva) of the Malasthậna, - saying "He, indeed, is able to protect the property), and to increase it," - gave to the honourable Gokarnapandita, free from all molestation, having laved his feet, eighty-five mattars of cultivable land, and six plots of garden-land, and the property of Adityabhatára, on the east side of that same god, making the boundaries to be on the east, the . . . . field; on the south, the cultivable land of the god; on the west, a stone that was (then) set up; and, on the north, the field of Kålabe(?).
(L. 17) Let the Goravas who manage this property be such as keep unbroken the vow of continence; the Goravas of this community shall reject those who are wanting in continence. The honourable pandit put this precept into the form of) & writing on stone, and set it up.
(L. 20) To him who protects this religious grant, there shall accrue the reward of performing an asvamadha-Bacrifice; to him who even) thinks of destroying it, there shall attach the guilt of slaying a Brahman ! (L. 21) Någadêya was the president of the meeting in the matter of this religious grant.
E.-Sirur inscription of the time of Amôghavarsha I.-A.D. 888. This inscription was brought to notice and edited by me in 1883, in the Ind. Ant. Vol. XII. p. 215 ff., from an ink-impression obtained in 1882. A lithograph of it was not given then. And, for that and other reasons, it is now re-edited. The collotype which accompanies the present revised version of the record, is from an ink-impression which Mr. Consens was good enough to obtain for me in 1898, the original impression having suffered some damage and become unsuitable for reproduction.
Sirûr is & village about sixteen miles west-by-north from Nawalgund, the head-quarters of the Nawalgand tâluka of the Dharwår district. The Indian Atlas sheet No. 41 (1852) shews it as Serroor.' And the Map of the Dharwâr Collectorate (1874) shews it as Siroor.' The record gives its name in the older form of Srivüra, which may possibly be a mistake for Srivůra, with the long e. And the purport of it places Sirûr in the Belvola three-hundred district. The inscription is on a stone tablet somewhere on the south of the hade or village-bastion at Sirdr.
I have to information as to whether there are any soulptures at the top of the stone. - The writing covers an area about 3' 7" broad by 3' 3" high. The extant portion of it is in a fairly good state of preservation, and can be read without any uncertainty, throughout. But, before it came to notice at all, a portion of it had been broken away and lost at the apper left-hand corner, it consequence of which there is missing a part of the text ranging from fifteen or sixteen aksharas in line 1, to one akshara in line 7. And, since the time when the original impression was obtained by me, some damage has been done to the lower left-hand corner, whereby we have lost one complete akshara at the beginning of lines 22, 23, and 24.-The characters are Kanarese, boldly formed and well executed. They contrast rather curiously with those of the Nilgand inscription, edited in Vol. VI. above, p. 98 ff., which are of a much more square and upright
1 sarana seems to be used here in the sense of the act of goveruing, ruling, government, and to be, like mahajana, a neuter employed with a collective meaning.
* This probably implies that the temple of Mabadêvs was the earlient and principal templo of the village. • The original uses the honoriflc plural," these, indeed, are able." • I.e., doubtless, the grantee, Gokarnapapditabhatára.
• Owing to the paper used in making the ink-impressions having stretched somewhat unevenly, marks of joining are observable below the end of line 12, and from between the syllable to and cha of ghaffita-aharanas, line 5, down to the bottom.
