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No. 15.)
A DUTCH MEMORIAL SLAB IN INDIA.
123
Even supposing that in Colebrooke's time the year began at Nägpur in the month of Asvina it can have no bearing on the question of the commencement of the Chēdi year for the simple reason that the country round Nāgpur was probably never under the rule of the Kalachurist. No inscriptions dated in the Chēdi era have been found in the Marathi-speaking districts of the Central Provinces and Berār. These districts which were evidently comprised in the three Mahārāshtras mentioned in the Aiho!e inscription of Pulakēģin II were successively under the Early Chalukyas, the Răshtrakūtas, the Paramāras, the later Chālukyas and the Yādavas, but never under the Kalachuris of Tripuri or of Ratanpur. In the present Central Provinces the use of that era was confined to the Chhattisgarh and the northern Hindi-speaking districts.
Kielhorn's view that the territory round Nagpur was once included in the Chedi kingdom was evidently due to his wrong identification of the kings Simhana and Ramachandra mentioned in the Rāmțek Lakshmana temple inscription with the homonymous kings of the Raipur branch of the Kalachuri dynasty. The inscription is fragmentary and has not been edited 80 far. Kielhorn's knowledge of the kings mentioned in it was derived from a faint rubbing which he obtained from Fleet. My examination of the inscription has convinced me that it belongs to the Yadava (and not the Kalachuri) dynasty; for 1.4 of it names the royal family as Yadavo vamsah. The kings Simhaņa and Ramachandra mentioned in 11. 14 and 19 are evidently the wellknown kings of the Yadava dynasty. That the rule of the Yādavas extended in the east as far as Lāñji in the Bālāghāt District, about 100 miles north by east of Nāgpur, is clear from & fragmentary stone inscription of the dynasty, found at Lāñji“, which has now been deposited in the Central Museum, Nāgpur.
There is thus not an iota of evidence to prove that the Chēdi era was current in the Nagpur District, nor to show that the Chēdi year commenced in Āsvina. On the other hand the testimony of some of the recently discovered Chēdi dates renders it probable that the Chēdi era commenced on Kārttika śu. di. 1 (the 6th October) in A. D. 248.
No. 15.--A DUTCH MEMORIAL SLAB IN INDIA.
By F. W. STAPEL, LIT. D., UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM. In 1911, Dr. J. Ph. Vogel, at present professor in the Leiden University, and at that time the officiating Director-General of Archæology in India, noticed a memorial slab with a Dutch
Some parts of Berăr may have been under the Early Kalachuri king Krishnarāja as a hoard of his coins was found at Dhamori near Amraoti in Berār, but these coins were used by other dynasties also.
Kielhorn has incidently mentioned this identification at the end of his article on the Khalāri stone inscription of Haribrahmadēva of the (Vikrama) year 1470, above, Vol. II, p. 230. He may also have had in mind the fact that the Kalachuri king Karna made his Benares grant (above, Vol. II, pp. 297 ff.) after bathing in the Veni. Kielhorn at first identified this river with the Waingangā which flows about 40 miles from Nagpur, but later on he corrected himself (see, above, Vol. IV, p. 122 n.) and took it to be a tributary of the Ganges which it joins at Allahābād.
The late Rai Bahadur Hiralal also, following Kielhorn, at first thought that the princes mentioned in the Rāmtek Lakshmana temple inscription belonged to the Haihaya dynasty, but he has not asserted that view in the second ed. of his Inscriptions in C. P. and Berar, p. 3. That these princes were of the Yadava dynasty is clear also from the fact that the first eight lines of the inscriptions, though much damaged, intimate the victories of these princes over Rudra, Andhra, Chola and perhaps Gurjarēndra also. It is clear that we have hero references to the brilliant exploits of the Yadava kings Jaitugi and Singhaņa. The petty kings of the Raipur branob of the Haihaya dynasty who ruled in the fifteenth century A. D. did not distinguish themselves in this way.
• Sce Hiralal'e Inscriptions in C. P. and Berar, (Second ed.) p. 20.
