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No. 34.]
KODAVALI ROCK-INSCRIPTION OF CHANDASATI.
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covered with thin forest vegetation. From here the place called "Dhanam-dibba" 1.-the treasure-mound' is reached by a gravelly foot-path running along the slope of the hill, which appears to have been once provided with steps of rubble stone. Struggling two or three furlongs along this unwelcome path we come to the crown of the hillock and to the mound
Dhanam-dibba' on it. Here are found the remains of what looks like a Buddhist stupo consisting mostly of large-sized bricks and sometimes unhewn stone. On the southern side of the mound are seen also portions of a structure built of cut and dressed stone. The four rock cut wells on the south and west sides of the mound, 4 to 5 feet square and 6 to 7 feet deep, are of peculiar interest and seem to have been used once for storing water for the use of the occupants of the Buddhist monastery, as the mound may prove to be when excavations are properly carried out.
On the north wall of one of the wells on the western side of the mound measuring 5' 81 long by 5' 5" broad and 7' 2' deep, is engraved in 6 lines the Andhra inscription, edited below, in Brahmi characters of about the 3rd century A.D. This inscription which was published in 1908 by Dr. Konow in 2. D.M.G., Vol. LXII, p. 591 f. has been noticed as No. 1341 by Dr. Lüders in his List of Brāhmi Inscriptions in Vol. X, above. As remarked by Dr. Sten Konow in the Director-General of Archeology's Annual Survey Report for 1907-08, p. 225, this is the only lithic record hitherto discovered of the Andhra king Chada sāta, who is already known to us from a number of coins found in the Kistna and the Godavari districts. My friend Mr. O. R. Krishnama Acharlu, B.A., of the Madras Epigraphical Department has also spent some hours with me in reading the inscription directly from the stone; and the text given below is the joint production of both of us. The accompanying facsimile plate is reproduced from an inked estampage prepared under my direct supervision. The inscription thus deciphered will be seen to differ much from the published text of Dr. Sten Konow. The object of the record, for instance, was not the establishment of the earth-dwelling (bhumi vesa) of an unnamed minister (amacha), but was the establishment of the gift (dhama) of a khaigu (rock-cut well ?) by the minister Saba of Khaddavali—the ancient form of the present village name Kodavali.3
The name of the king occurs in l. 3 as Chamdasāti, the lingual à being possibly also read as a dentar d. Bat. it is to be noted that the long vertical stem which is required to distinguish a dental d (cf. di in 1. 4) is missing here ; again da may be compared with Khadda in 1. 4. The form Chadasātisat occurs clearly on one of the coins published by Rapson. So also on the Kodavali rock the i of ti is faintly seen and is practically certain. Possibly sati is a Prākrit form of Svati and Chandasati has accordingly to be interpreted as Chandasväti. In the table of later Andhra kings given opposite p. 218 of his Early History of India (third edition) by V. A. Smith, the name-ending sāti occurs only in the case of No. 22 Siva-svāti. But the Matsya-Purāna gives many other names ending in sväti or stātikarna, such as Mēghasväti, Kuntalasväti, Sundarasvātikarpa, etc. It may be incidentally noted also that the name-ending svátikarna is more
1 Compare Dhana Badu near Jaggayyapēta ; Burgess's “ Buddhist Stupas of Amaravati," p. 107.
- Mr. Res who discovered it for the first time has referred to it in his report for 1907-08, p. 8. He says that at the foot of the hills are the remains of fort which, however, I was not able to identify.
• If, however, the reading fore( ) of the learned Doctor is accepted, I would observe a striking coincidence in the term for which occurs twice in the Sundara känds of the Ramayana (T. R. K.'s Edition. Chapter XI1, 14 and XY, 4) where, in both instances, the commentator Govindarāja explains the term as Haf :. The context also shows that these ouderground cellars of Ravana's Palace and Pleasure-garden were primarily meant for hiding objects from the view of the enemy. The same may have been he case with these so-called Rock-cut Wells of the Pithāparam forest which surely must have formod part of the Dandaka-forest and as such must bave been once haunted by wicked Rakshasne.
. On & second coin figured as G. P. I. in Pl. VI of the Coins of the Andhra dynasty by Rapson, the reading is Chandasát[a]sa with an anustara marked to the left of cha as in the Kodavali rock inscription.
Dr. B. G. Bhandar kar's Early flistory of the Dekkan, p. 16*.
