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No. 32.]
State in the Southern Maratha Country, Bombay, and that Ahavamalla, hearing of that, met and fought him at Koppam, but "became afraid, incurred disgrace, and ran away." And a brief but vivid account of the battle is given in another of his records of the same year, at Manimangalam, dated precisely on 17 August, A.D. 1055.9
INSCRIPTIONS FROM YEWUR: NOTES BY DR. FLEET.
297
Two items of importance about Koppam are given in the records which thus mention it. (1) One is that it was seppa-ma-tirtta, "a proper great tirtha. "3 (2) The other is that it was on për-arran-garai, "the bank of the great river." Here we have the Tamil karai, which is the Kanarese kare, bank, shore', and per-äru, of which the Kanarese equivalent perdore, peldore, great river', is well established as a name of the Krishṇā.5
We thus have Koppam defined as a great tirtha or holy place on the bank of a great river which we have good reason to take to be the Krishna; and the Tiruvallam inscription, quoted above, tends strongly to place it somewhere near Kōlhapur.
The clue to the rest is found in an inscription of A.D. 1213 at Khedrāpār, or more properly Khidrapur, a village which is shown in the Indian Atlas quarter-sheet 40, S.E. (1905), in lat. 16° 36', long. 74° 44'. The village belongs to the Samkaracharya Svami of Sankeshwar in the Belgaum District; and an annual jatra is held at it, in the month Pausha. It is about thirty miles towards east-by-south from Kolhapur, and is situated on the right bank of the Krishna, in a loop which the river makes below Kurandwaḍ on the north, where the Panchganga flows into it, and above Danwad on the south, where it is joined by the Dudhganga. This inscription, which has been edited by me in JBBRAS, Vol. XII, p. 7, is on a store tablet at the temple of Koppesvara. It is dated in the Srimukha samvatsara, Saka
1 Loc. cit., No. 744; South-Ind. Inscrs., Vol. III, p. 112.
2 Loc. cit., No. 745; South -Ind. Insers., Vol. III, p. 63.
Inscription of Rajendradeva at Volagerehalli in the Bangalore District, Mysore, Epi. Carn., Vol. IX, Bn 108; the published text and translation give seppa mä-tirtta, "the beautiful great tirtha "; but the meaning of seppam seems to be 'propriety', rather than 'beauty'; compare the Kanarese say pu rectitude, propriety, justice, virtue, merit', and the roots chey, sey, say, 'straightness, rectitude'. This record, also, has the account of the battle; its historical introduction being the same with that in the Manimangalam record mentioned above. The published text and translation of this latter record (South-Ind. Insers., Vol. III, pp. 60, 63) give fepp-arun-tiratta, the strength (of whose position is) hard to describe"; the analysis being apparently seppu, to speak', with arun, difficult', and tiratta from tira the tadbhava of the Sanskrit athira, 'firm, steady': bat the translation here introduces something which is not in the text: and, as remarked by Dr. Barnett, with whom I have discussed these two passages, sepp-arun would rather mean "rare in propriety or elegance". The expression deppa-mä-tirtta seems the more likely one; compare seppa-ma:nadai, proper high conduct and it is conceivable that it is the real reading in the Manimangalam inscription also.
Kielhorn's Nos. 744, 746, 748, 749, 751 (P), 1080.
See above, Vol. V, p. 169, note 6; Vol. VI, p. 259.-Originally, in South-Ind. Insers., Vol. I, p. 134 (Kielhorn's No. 746), the reference to " the great river" was not understood; the translation was given as " Koppam on the bank of the Pêraru;" and the suggestion was made that the Pêraru might be the Päläru, Pälär, and Koppam might be Kuppam, a village in the North Arcot District, Madras, which gives its name to a station on the Bangalore Branch of the Madras Railway. Then, in South-Ind. Insers., Vol. II, p. 232, the translation was corrected into "Koppam on the bank of the big river;" and the suggestion was made that the reference might be to the Tunga and Koppa, a taluka town in the Kaḍür District, Mysore. But, even apart from the objection that neither cen Kuppam be said to be exactly on the Pälär nor Koppa on the Tunga, these two places are of no importance from any point of view, except that one of them happens to give its name to a railway station, and the other was made in 1897 the head-quarters of a taluka. Another suggestion has been (Epi. Carn., Vol. IX. Bangalore, introd., p. 16, note 3; and Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions, p. 90) that Koppam may be Kopal, Kopana", by which is meant Koppal, in the south-west corner of the Nizam's territory, about seven miles north of the Tungabhadra: in this case there is not even an identity of name to give colour to the idea.It may be added that koppa, 'a small village', is by no means an uncommon name of places in the Kanarese country: it also occurs freely as an ending of place-names; e.g., Bamankop, Chikkop, Devtkop, Govindkop, Hirekop, etc.
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