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No. 25.]
VEMALURPADU PLATES OF AMMARAJA II.
Vēmalarpāḍu, a village close to the Phirangipuram Railway Station in the Guntur District He describes them as follows:
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"Five plates with raised rims. The first and the last have writing on their inner sides only. The plates measure 9" by 44". They are held together by a circular copper ring which measures 5" in diameter and 2" in thickness. The ends of the ring are fixed into the bottom of a seal whose base is fashioned into a lotus of eight petals. The seal, which is circular, measures 38" in diameter and bears, within a countersunk surface, the figure of a running boar facing the proper left, with a chauri in front of it. Below the boar is the legend Sri-Tribhuvan[am]k[u]sa in old Telugu characters, and below it a lotus flower of eight petals spread out, with the sun and an ankusa to the right, and the crescent of the moon to the left. The ring had not yet been cut when the plates were received from the Collector of Guntur. The plates and seal together weigh 410
tolas."
The writing on the plates is in a state of good preservation, with the exception of portions of plate iv, b. The alphabet is Telugu, and the language is Sanskrit prose, interspersed with 19 Sanskrit verses. The description of the boundaries of two fields in lines 59-63 is in a mixture of Sanskrit and Telugu. The writer seems to have possessed a very superficial knowledge of the former language. As the notes on the text will show, he has committed an inordinate number of mistakes and omissions in copying the historical introduction from the records of his office. I shall not waste space and time by lengthy remarks on the orthography of this document. The upadhmaniya is represented by the Telugu symboly in line 8, and by p at the beginning of line 67. The Sanskrit word rashtra is spelt raltra and raltra in line 48.
The inscription on the plates records a grant of land by the Eastern Chalukya king Ammaraja II, and opens with a historical account of his ancestors which is nearly identical with the one given in the Maliyapundi grant. As I have already discussed this genealogical portion elsewhere, I need note here only the corrupt verse 1 (line 11), according to which it remains doubtful whether the reign of Vijayaditya II, surnamed Narendramṛigaraja, was believed to have lasted either 48 or only 40 years."
Verses 9-15 seem to have been composed by a Brahmana named Bhaṭṭagunda (1. 73) and do not reflect much credit on this panegyrist as a grammarian and poet. Verse 9 states that Amma II was the son of Bhima (II), the grandson (in reality, the great-grandson) of Bhima (I), and the great-grandson (in reality, the grandson of the grandson) of Vikramanka. The same verse alludes to the attack made by Vallabha, i.e. the Rashtrakuta king Krishna II, on Bhima I. It implies that Bhima I bore the surname Ritasiddhi,' and that Vikramäñka (i.e. Vikramaditya I) had received the dignity of heir-apparent, but did not ascend the throne. Verse 13 informs us that Amma II was eight years old when he was anointed to the dignity of heir-apparent, and that he was twelve years old at the time of his coronation. From other grants the exact date of the last is known to have been Friday, 5th December, A.D. 945, in the twelfth year of his age."
The regnal year of Amma II in which the grant recorded in the Vemalurpaḍu plates was made, is not specified in them. On the day of a winter-solstice (uttarayana, 1. 56), the
Mr. Krishna Sastri has very kindly deciphered from the original copper-plate, and rendered into English, a few Telugu words of this passage which I had been unable to read and explain.
Above, Vol. IX, p. 48 f.
3 Cf. Fleet's remarks in Ind. Ant., Vol. XX, p. 100 f. See below, p. 283, note 15.
Ibid., p. 102, and above, Vol. IX, p. 84f.
See Ind. Ant., Vol. XX, p. 103.
See Ind. Ant., Vol. XX, p. 271; above, Vol. IX, p. 55 f., and p. 134 1.
2 y 2
