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214
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. VII.
the Banavasi twelve-thousand, the Belgau three-hundred, the Kundarage seventy, the Kundur flve-hundred, and the Purigere three-hundred :
(Line 8) Kundaţte, the son of Bankêye, while governing the Nidugundage twelve, said to Bankhya—"Let there be a religious grant;” and Kundaţte and Râpa, being convened, gave one mattar of garden-land and five mattars of cultivable land to the god Mahadeva of the temple of Kuppanna the Pergade of the Nidugundage twelve.
(L. 13) On Malda giving his own share, that same honourable Kuppa caused the temple to be made ; and, while Sankara was holding office as Nálgamundu, Gadiyamma, protecting that property, acquired it so that it continued unimpaired, free from all molestation.
(L. 16) To him who protects this, there shall accrue the reward of performing an astamêdha-sacrifice at Varanasi; to him who destroys it, there shall attach the guilt of the great sin of destroying a thousand brown cows or a thousand Brahmans!
(L. 19) Durgadása prepared this stone.
At the top of the stone. (L. 20) Let there be reverence! The honourable one, the saintly Viņakadeva, did a kindness to the whole .. . ., and obtained this property.
The family-name of the Rashtrakuțas of Malkhed. To my previous paper on some of the records of the Rashtrakūta kings of Malkhed, in Vol. VI. above, p. 160 ff., I attached some notes on a few special points, chiefly in connection with the names, birudas, and other appellations of the various members of that family. Eventually, we shall consider some wider questious, such as the antiquity that may be assigned to the Rashtrakața stock, the extraction of the Rashtrakūtas, the period and localities in which they first came to the front as a ruling power, and the distribution of them in later times as indicated in the first place by epigraphic records, and in the second place by the existence of tribes and clans who now claim to be of Rashtrakūta descent. Meanwhile, I deal now with some more preliminary points.
In line 13 of the Sirur inscription of A.D. 866, as also in the corresponding passage in line 16 of the Nilgund inscription of the same date, the family name of the Malkhêd dynasty is presented to us, in the formal prasasti or eulogy in Kanarese prose which introduces the practical details of the record, as Ratta, in the description of A môghavarsha I. as Raffa-taif-8dbhava, "born in the race of the Rattas, or in the Ratta race." And these two passages are the earliest known passages which present the name Ratta.
Ilds is equivalent to oda#zi!du ; see Vol. VI. above, page 68, note 6.
This passage, the construction of which is not quite grammatical, seems to recite the previous founding of the temple, and the original endowment of it. -The meaning of nile is not quite certain; but the word seems to be
form of the infinitive of mil, milw, in the sense of 'to stand or Inat, to continue unimpaired. A very similar expression, sila madinidon, occurs in line 46 of the Hebba inscription of A.D. 975 (Vol. IV. above, p. 354); nila, also, is a form of the infinitive of wil, nilu.
The meaning of the word at the beginning of line 23 is not known. • Page 206 ahove.
Vol. VI. above, p. 103. . It is convenient to speak of "the Ratts or Rashtrakūta race, lineage, or family," and of the Ratta or Rashtrakūta kiugdom, rule, or sovereignty.” And we meet with the actual expression Ratt-dhuayo pansah, "the race which has the appellation Ratta;” see page 218 f. But the exact analysis of all such compounds 44 Ratta-vamia, Rashtrakita.kula, and Ratta-rdjya, etc., seems to be Rattandı varía, "the race of the Ratas," Rashtrakútandi kula, "the family of the keshtrakutas," and Rattandn rdjya, "the kingdom, rale, or sovereignty of the Rattas," and so on; compare the expressions cansó .... Yadundm and Yadu-kula on page 37 above, tot lines 8, 9, and 9-10, and Tadbr-anrayaḥ and Yadarama in Ind. Ant. Vol. XII. p. 264, text lines 6 and 6.7.
