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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XV.
The inscription-at any rate the first portion of it-refers to the construction of a temple to the god Karttikeya or Kumāra-svamin, who, it says, had come from Chebrolu to attend a religious festival at Bejavada and liked that place so well that he made up his mind to stay there. This seems to suggest that the idol was brought from Chebrolu, and the prose passage seems to exhort the people of that village not to disturb the idol, lest they should incur sin. There is now no temple of Kumara-svamin at Chebrolu; but it was famous for that temple at one time, and I have in my possession inscriptions which show that the temple was in existence as late as Saka 1135. If the idol was removed to Bejaväḍa during the time of the Chalukyan king Yuddhamalla, how could it be worshipped at Chebrolu in the time of Kakatiya king Ganapati ? One explanation is that the idol may have been taken back to Chebrolu. This is not, perhaps, improbable, as even the site of the temple is not now known at Bejavada. But a more probable explanation seems to be that the idol at Bejavaḍa was only a replica of the one at Chebrolu, and to give it importance the inscription makes out that the idol is inhabited by the spirit of the well-known idol of the same name at Chebrolu. The fact that the inscription is composed in the Madhyakkara metre is also relevant, as showing that the Sanskrit metres were not much in vogue at that time.
We see that even at this remote period the grammar and prosody of the Telugu language had attained a high state of development and were nearly standardized. This implies a more or less extended period of evolution, so that as a literary language Telugu must be accorded a greater antiquity than is generally allowed. The absence of Telugu books of a date anterior to Nannaya-Bbaṭṭa is one of the moot questions of Telugu literature, and the time has not arrived yet for answering it. It is only reasonable, however, to suppose that, like the Kanarese literature, Telugu literature also had a Jain period; and this presumption derives support from the fact that some of the classical Kanarese Jaina poets (Pampa, Ponna and Nagavarman for instance) emigrated from the Vengi country. At present no Telugu books which can be traced to the Jains are known to exist, except perhaps the Kavijaniśrayamu, purporting to have been composed by Mallia-Recha, a disciple of Vadindra.
I will now add a few remarks about the peculiarities in form or meaning of some of the words used in the inscription. Salki (1. 6) is the tadbhava form of Chalukya. It occurs also in a copper-plate inscription of Chalukya-Bhima I which is in my possession, where the king is called Bhima-Salki (Tat-sunur Vijayadityo Bhima-Salki-namanam tat-paksha-dakshinaGamga-balam cha nirjitya). Negi-dirchche (1. 10) seems to be a compound of negayu (egayu)= "to rise" and tirchu=" to lay out or design," and means "erected." Goraga (1. 10) is the Telugu form of the Kanarese gorava, which according to Kittel means a Saiva mendicant. It is now obsolete in Telugu. In the inscription it is used in the sense of a "Saiva devotee or teacher." The anxiety of the donor was that the matham should not be used by persons other than Saivas. This probibition, considering the vehemencel with which it is propounded, seems to be directed against the Jainas, who were still to be found in large numbers in this part of the country (Epigraphical Report for 1908-09, paragraph 60). In the early centuries of the Christian era Jainism along with Buddhism flourished in the Vengi country; but it began to decline. after the advent of the Chalukyas, who were followers of the Vedic faith. In Yuddhamalla's time Jainism still lingered in places. Dussi (1. 14) is the past participle of dayyu, meaning to be exhausted." Here it is used as a transitive verb, meaning to cause to be exhausted,' i.e. to set at naught. Raju-paṭṭambu (11. 16 and 17) is the fillet which is the ensign of kingship, and it is tied to the forehead of a king at the time of his coronation. I have not
1
[Cf. the conditions imposed upon erotic goratas in one of the Yewür inscriptions of A.D. 1077 (Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XII, p. 290, and Annual Report on Epigraphy, 1916, p. 88). The mathas of Kärttikeya must, like those of the Pasupata-Baivas, have been institutions with certain strict laws to obey.-H. K. S.]
