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No. 11.]
refer to it by the general term, the victorious royal camp (vijaya-skandhavara). From his victorious camp the illustrious dharma-mahārāja Simhavarman "gave to Devasarman, well-versed in all the Sastras, a resident of Kundür, of the Kasyapa Gōtra and the Chhandōga Sutra, the village Ōmgöḍu in Karmma-rashtra, (situated) within its four boundaries, (viz.,) the village Koḍikim on the east, the village Narachaḍu on the south, the village Kaḍakuduru on the west, and the village Penukaparru on the north, excluding previous holdings, on the occasion of an eclipse (?), for the increase of our vitality, strength and victory." The phrase introducing the usual address of the king to the inhabitants of the district in which the granted village was situated is omitted in line 8; but this is, however, presumed in lines 23 to 25, where they are asked " to exempt and cause to be exempted the said village with all immunities (parihāra). The sinner who transgresses this Our edict shall be liable to corporal punishment." Here follow three comminatory and imprecatory verses of the old Rishia (lines 26 to 31). The grant was made on the fifth tithi (pañchami) of the bright fortnight of Vaisakha in the fourth year of the increasing and victorious years of the reign (line 31 f.); and the plates were engraved at the oral command of the king (bhaṭṭaraka) himself (line 32 f.).
TWO PALLAVA COPPER-PLATE GRANTS.
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A very interesting synchronism recorded in the recently discovered Western Ganga copper-plates from Penugonda in the Anantapur district adds much to our knowledge of the time and helps us to fix the approximate date of some of the Pallava kings of this period. This synchronism, already noticed in the Madras Epigraphical Report for 1914, page 83, paragraph 4, has been fully discussed by the late Dr. Fleet in his article "A new Ganga Record and the date of Saka 380," contributed to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1915 (pp. 471 to 485). The Pallava-maharaja Simhavarman and the Pallava-mahārāja Skandavarman are here stated to have respectively anointed on the Ganga throne the Western Ganga kings Ayyavarman and Madhava II, who were related to each other as father and son. The Ganga chronology constructed by Mr. Rice on the very unreliable material supplied by the chronicle Kongu-dēšu-rajakkal and some spurious Ganga records is not likely to throw light on the date of the Pallava kings Simhavarman and Skandavarman, assigning as it does the Ganga king Madhava II to the 3rd century A.D. or thereabouts. The characters of the Penugonda plates clearly point to the 5th century as their probable period, judged paleographically; and it is not therefore possible to accept the Western Ganga chronology put forth by Mr. Rice. Dr. Fleet, accordingly, resorts to a literary quotation from a Digambara Jaina work, entitled Lōkaribhaga, which refers to the 22nd year of Simhavarman, the lord of Kañchi, as corresponding to Saka 380. This, if it is to be relied upon, yields for Simhavarman II the initial date A.D. 436 and tallies satisfactorily with the paleographical indications, which place his inscriptions in about the 5th century of the Christian era. The statement in the Lokavibhaga that Simhavarman was the lord of Kañchi is also an indirect confirmation of the fact that Kumaravishnu, the uncle of Simhavarman II, recaptured, as stated in the Velürpalaiyam plates, the capital town of Conjeeveram, which the immediate predecessors of Kumāravishņu had evidently lost, their grants being dated from Tambrapa, Mēnmatura, Palakkada and Dasanapura, while their still earlier predecessors referred to Kañchi-pura (Conjeeveram) as their capital.
The eclipse day, which in line 22 is stated to have been the occasion for the grant, is apparently contradicted by the details of date, viz., the 5th day of the bright fortnight of Vaisakha in the 22nd year of the reign, quoted in lines 31-32, and may perhaps be reconciled by supposing that the grant, which was actually made on the new-moon day of Chaitra, a possible day for the nearest solar eclipse, was engraved on the copper-plates five days after, i.e., on the 5th day of the bright half of Vaisakha. It therefore follows, if the initial date derived from the Lokuvibhaga for Simhavarman II is to be accepted, that there must have been in A.D. 440, the fourth year of the king, a solar eclipse in the month of Chaitra. This, however, does not happen to be the fact.
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