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296
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
This explanation of the irregularity of the date is, I submit, too farfetched. It is incredible that it took Stambha six or seven years to obtain the imperial sanction to his grant. Even granting that Govinda could not give the required sanction in Saka 724 because he was then constantly engaged in fighting, one fails to understand why the sanction was not forthcoming in Saka 727 at least, by which time Govinda had finished all his important campaigns both in the north and in the south and the draft of the prasasti was also ready for use, as we find it actually used in the Nesari plates of that year. The prasasti was of course composed by a court-poet of Govinda III, not by that of Stambha. Govinda must have used it in his own grants made before Saka 727, though they have not been discovered so far.
[VOL. XXIII.
Let us next examine the reason which has led Dr. Altekar to offer the foregoing farfetched explanation. He thinks that the various exploits mentioned in the stereotyped prasasti could not have been achieved during seven or eight years (A.D. 794-802). But are there not instances, in our ancient history, of equally remarkable victories being achieved by great military commanders in the same or even smaller periods of time? I will mention here only one or two cases of this type. The Rashtrakuta king Indra III invaded North India and pressed as far as Kanauj, the imperial capital, which he conquered and devastated. As Dr. Altekar himself has shown, Indra came to the throne in A.D. 915 and died in A.D. 917. So this brilliant achievement of his could not have taken more than two years. Is it then impossible that Govinda finished his campaigns in Northern and Central India within a period of four or five years (Saka 717-21) as suggested in my article? Another instance is that of the Kalachuri Karna. We know from his Benares plates that he succeeded his father in the Kalachuri year 792 (A.D. 1040). The Rewah stone inscription, which I have recently edited in this Journal, describes his victories over a king, probably of the Chandra dynasty, in the East, the Pallavas, Chōlas and Chalukyas in the South and the Gurjaras in the West. As this inscription is dated in the Kalachuri year 800 (A.D. 1048-49), it is plain that these victories of Karna must bave been attained within a period of only seven years. The adversaries of Karna were surely not less powerful than those of Govinda III and the means of transport had not probably improved much during the period of about two centuries and a half that separated these two kings.
Dr. Altekar thinks that Govinda's sensational victories in North India, during which he humbled Chakrayudha and Dharmapala, were attained after the stereotyped draft was prepared, as they are not mentioned in it. This is at best an argumentum ex silentio and should be used with caution; for we know of several cases in which conclusions based on such absence of mention have been disproved by fresh discoveries. Besides, we do not know for certain the exact length of the stereotyped draft when it was first prepared. Though it has been used in as many as eleven charters," it is well-known that it is not of uniform length in all these cases. The longest form of it known so far is that noticed in the Nesari plates in which the eulogistic portion consists of 24 verses. In other charters the draft is shorter by from 5 to 10 verses. We
1 G. H. Khare, Sources of the Medieval History of the Dekkan (Marathi), Vol. I, pp. 15 ff.
See his Rashtrakutas and Their Times, pp. 100 and 105,
Above, p. 217.
Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 305 ff.
Below, Vol. XXIV, pp. 101 ff.
See e.g. above, Vol. XIX, p. 63.
Ten of these have been mentioned above, p. 216. Since then I have noticed one more charter of the same type, see J. B. B. R. A. 8. (New Series), Vol. III, pp. 187-89.
These do not include the opening mangala-bloka and the concluding verse ten-dam-anila. etc,
The Radhanpur plates, for instance, have 19, the Lohärä grant 16 and the Bahuläwäd plates only 14 verses.
