Epigraphia Indica Vol 10

Author(s): Sten Konow, V Venkayya
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India

Page 14

No. 1.]
THE PALLAVA INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SEVEN PAGODAS.
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whose reign is well established by inscriptions on stone and copper, while, instead of Paramės. varavarman II., the Kanchi inscriptions mention another son of Rajasimha, named Mahendravarman(III.). The second group of inscribed monuments at the Seven Pagodse would thus belong to about the third quarter of the seventh century,
III.-The third alphabet is that of an insoription of the Pallava king Atiranachanda on the left of the cave at Saluvanguppam (No. 28) and of three short epigraphs : one at the top of the same cave (No. 25), another on the " Dharmaraja-raths" (No. 18), and a third near the " Gopis' Churn " (No. 19). It resembles, though it is not quite identical with, the alphabet of the Kagakudi plates of Nandivarman. The name (or surname) Atiranachapda is unknown from other sources. As the alphabet of stone inscriptions sometimes differs slightly from that of contomporaneous records on copper, there would be no objection to Assigning these records, as will be done in the sequel, to the time of Nandivarman, the contemporary of the Western Chalukya king Vikramaditya U.
IV.-The last alphabet, an early kind of Nagari, is employed in the inscription on the right of the Saluvangappam cave (No. 24) and in a short label at the top of the same cave (No. 26). No. 24 is a copy of the first six verses of Atirapachanda's epigraph on the left of the same cave (No. 23), and No. 26 is a repetition of the label in the third alphabet which is engraved immediately above it (No. 25). The characters resemble those of the Nagari version on the Pattadakal pillar of the Western Chalukya king Kirtivarman II. As we know that the predecessor of this king, Vikramiditya II.,' took Kattohi from the Pallava king Nandivarman, it is perhaps not too bold to surmise that the inscriptions in the third and fourth alphabets belong to the reign of bis enemy Nandivarman, who would then have borne the surname Atirapachapda. The sudden collapse of the Pallava power at the hands of Vikramaditya IL may have been the reason why so msay of the excavations at the Seven Pagodas have remained unfinished. As I have remarked in South Indian Inscription Vol. I. p. 10, we meet with the same plurality of alphabets in the Kailasanatha templo a Kátichi. The enclosure of this temple bears three tiers of identical inscriptions. The characters of the third tier are those of the epigraphs of Narasimhavarman II. The alphabets of the second and first tiers are, respectively, those of the left and right inscriptions of the siluvatguppam cave. Consequently they must have been added at a later date by Atiranaobanda (Nandivarman P).
I am fully aware that my remarks on the third and fourth alphabets do not rest on quito firm ground. But, in the absence of further information, we may place the inscriptions written in both alphabets in the time immediately preceding the conquest of the Pallava territory by Vikramaditya II. (A.D. 733-784 to 746-747). The fact that a northern alphabet was employed along with a southern one suggests that the artisans were recruited from the north of India
The two last columns of the accompanying table will show at a glance to which of the Pallaya kings of the third column I propose to assign each of the Pallava records of the Seven Pagodas. It is worth noting that, with his asual sagacity, Dr. Fergusson had already succeeded in fixing the approximate period of the remains at the Seven Pagodaw at about 650 to 700.
The contents of the subjoined insoriptions are singularly uninteresting and devoid of historical facts. All that we learn from them is a string of names and surnames of three different
Plato.
South Ind. Inser. Vol. II. No. 73.
Above, Vol. III. p. South-Ind. Inger. Vol. I. p. 146 ; above, Vol. III Pp. 3 and 369. Cave Temples of India, p. 110 4.
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