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No. 11.]
TWO PALLAVA COPPER-PLATE GRANTS.
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establishers of Pallava power in the heart of the Chola country. These facts have been practically settled and have been derived from their own copper-plates, the copper-plate records of the contomporaneous Western Chalukyas and the Pallava stone inscriptions found pretty largely in Southern India. It is not with this period of Pallava history that we are now concerned. A century or so prior to these there ruled a regular line of Pallava kings in and about the Nellore district, whose copper-plates have been published in the volumes of the Epigraphia Indica and the Indian Antiquary. It is with the earliest of these kings that the first of the copper-plates in quostion is connected. Before commenting on them I should like to say a word of the still earlier Pallava kings, whose charters are all in the Pråkpit language and are hence assigned to a period not much later than those of the Andhras of the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Christian era. What position these early Pallavas occupied under the Andhras and under what particular circumstances they rose into supreme power are questions which could not be answered at present, but must await future research. The earliest document of these early Pallavas is that of Siva-Skandavarman, issued while the latter was yet a crown-prince (yuvamahārāja). It is dated from his capital Conjeeveram and is addressed to his Viceroy at Dhannakada (Dhānyakataka-Dharaņikota, near Amaravati) in Andhrāpatha, the Andhra country. The next is a copper-plate record of the same king after his accession to the throne and the assumption of the title dharma-mahārājādhiraja, 'the righteous sapreme king of great kinga." This was also issued from Conjeeveram. It refers to the grant of a village in Satahani-Rattha, a territorial division which is evidently to be located in the Bellary district. The mention of Sātahani-Rattha in this record of about the 3rd century A.D., and of Såtsvaghani-hāra in an Andhra record of the 2nd century A.D., recently discovered by the Madras Epigraphist's office at Myākadoni in the Adoni taluka of the Bellary district, plainly indicates not only the possible identification of the two territorial divisions, but further suggests by inference the political succession of the Andhras by the Pallavas of Kāñchi (Conjoeveram). Still another record of this same early Pallava period is that of queon Chāru-devi, the wife of the yuvamalarāja Vijaya-Buddhavarman and mother of Buddhyankara. It comes from the Guntar district and is dated in the reign of Vijaya-Skandavarman, who was evidently the grandfather of prince Buddhyankura and the raling sovereign at the time of the grant. It is doubtful what relationship this Vijaya-Skanda varman bore t, Siva-Skandavarman of the two records mentioned above. Anyhow, it is gathered from the three early Prākpit records quoted above that the Pallavas of the Bhāradvaja götra were the political successors of the Andhray; that they had their capital at Kāñchi (Conjeeveram), and that their kingdom roughly included at that period the Topda-mandalam and the Andlira country right up to the river Krishā, including the Bellary district in the west. Another name might still be added to these early Pallnvas, viz., that of Vishnugopa of Kanchi, mentioned in the famous Allahābād posthumous pillar inscription of Samudragupta. This powerful Gupta king of about the middle of the 4th century A.D. is stated to have captured and then liberated among others the king Vishnugopa of Kanchi. It is not made clear in the Allahābād pillar inscription whether this subduel Vishnugopa was a king of the Pallava dynasty or not. Bat, as the name is quite popular with the later Pallava kings, and as we do not know of other kings of that name who ruled at Káñchi at this early period, it may be presumed that the Vishnugopa mentioned as a cor. temporary of Samudragupta was a Pallava. If so, the question arisee how this Vishnugopa was connected with the kings Siva-Skandavarman and Vijaya-Skandavarman, already mentioned. Now inscriptions dated prior to the 4th century A.D., such as those of the Andhr.us, are always in Präksit; and it is consequontly not unreasonable to suppose that the
Above, Vol. VI. pr. 81 f. deral Report on Epigraphy for 1910, p. 112.
? Ditto, Vol. I, pp. 2 f.
Above, Vol. VIII, pp. 143 f.
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