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EPIGRAPBIA INDICA
(VOL. XIX.
No. 42.--THE PULIBUMRA PTATES OF THE EASTERN CHALUKYA KING JAYA
SIMHA I (C. 632-63 A. D.).
BY V. RANGACHARYA, M.A., KUMBAKONAM. The following copper plate grant was brought to the notice of the Assistant Archeological Superintendent for Epigraphy, Madras, in 1914, by M. R. Ry. Jayanti Ramayya Pantulu Garu. It is registered in the Epigraphical Report for 1913-14 as No. 5 of Appendix A ; and a summary of it appears on p. 85 of the same Report. I edit the record here with the kind. permission of the discoverer of the plates. The ink impressions of the plates were kindly furnished by the Government Epigraphist.
The inscription is engraved on three plates, which measure slightly below six inches by two and are strung together through ring-holes, measuring one-fourth of an inch in diameter. Regarding the soal which must have originally secured the ends of the ring I possess no information. The plates are numbered, though the figure on the first plate alone is clear. The engraving is distinct though at the end of lines 7, 18 and 18 there are erasures.
Excepting the imprecatory stanza (Bahubhir etc.) which comes at the end, the record is written in Sanskrit proso.
The alphabet and orthography do not call for any special remarks. Compared to the Tim. måpuram plates of Vishnuvardhana I Vishamasiddhi and the Pedda-Maddäli plates of this very king (Jayasinha I), we, no doubt, find a few differences in the way some of the letters are written but they are too minor to be noticed in detail. The final t which in the Timmäpuram plates is placed on the top of the succeeding letter and in the Pedda-Maddāli plates sometimes comes as a full circle, is here written as a separate letter (1. 1). The final m is here shown, though only once, like (1.2). The Timmāpuram plates give it as a dot but the Pedda-Maddäli plates put it both as & dot and as a curve. The doubling of consonants after r is to be seen here also e.g., parākram-8pārijita (1. 7) or karmma (1. 18). Though the record is rather free from the grammatical blunders which characterise the grant portion of the Timmäpuram plates, yet it contains errors like the wrong use of visarga in Manuhriva (1. 9) and of anusvāra as in bhuvanain mandala (1. 3).
The inscription records a grant made by the Eastern Chalukyan king Jayasimha I, who ruled from about 632 to 663 A. D. Only one record of this king had been discovered before 1914, namely, the Pedda-Maddāli platest. It is dated in his 18th year and distinguishes him by the title Sarvasiddhi. It was issued from the city of Udayapura, which has not yet been identified. From a number of inaccuracies in the language its genuineness has been questioned, but I think the faults are due to the composer and the record is authentic. According to it Jayasinha was the son of Vishamasiddhi Kubja-Vishnuvardhana 1 and grandson of Kirtivarman, the Chalukyan king who ruled from circa 550 to 567 A.D. The number of his epithets would show that he was a pious and successful sovereign.
The present record (11. 12-13) calls him Prithvi-Jayasingha-vallabha, not Jayasimha as the other records do. The term. Prithvivallabha, it should be noted, was a title of Kirtivarman I
1 Ind. Ant., Vol. XIII, p. 137. It is registered as Kt. 337 in my Topographical List of Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency. Fleet's paper has been reproduced, without any alteration and without nlatae in Rurones and Natesa Bastri's Tamil and Sanskrit Inscriptions (Arch. Surt. South India, Vol. IV), pp. 166ff. Soc also Ind. Ant., Vol. X, p. 243-4 and Sewell's List of Copper Plates No. 3 for shorter notices of the record.
Ep. Ind. YuL IX, p. 101.
