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No. 19.)
TWO INSCRIPTIONS ON COPPER-PLATES FROM NUTIMADUGU.
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deciphering to a great extent the preserved portion of the record. The alphabet is ancient Telugu of the 10th century A.D. and the language of the extant portion is Sanskrit.
In spite of the sbortcomings noted above this inscription (A) which refers itself to the reign of Vikramaditya (II) is valuable as it is the first and only record of the king yet discovered. As pointed out above, its beginning, which must have been written on a plate which does not now form part of the set, is missing. The first king mentioned is Jayasimhavallabha (i.e., Jayasimha I) who, as in all other records of the Eastern Chalukya dynasty, is given a reign of thirty years. Then follows the genealogy of the dynasty recording the length of each reign, down to Vikramaditya (II) who is introduced in the usual prose preamble to the grant (II. 25-27) with the birudas of Samastabhuvanäsraya, Mahārājādhiraja, Paramēśvara, Paramabhattāraka and Paramabrahmanya. He issues a command to the Rāshtrakūças and others inhabiting the Kandārvvādi-vishaya. The name of this vishaya occurs in different forms as Gandēruvāti, Kandēruvâţi, Kandéfuvādi and Kaņdravādi in several Eastern Chalukya inscriptions and its chief town Kaņdēru, after which the district was named, has been identified with Kantēru in the Guntur District. The grant portion which was recorded next and the date, if it was given, are lost thus depriving us of some valuable facts.
No information of any historical importance that is not already known can be gathered about the predecessors of the donor, viz., king Vikramaditya II. Attention may, however, be drawn to the length of reign assigned to Vijayaditya II, the builder of 108 teniples of Narēndrēsvara. He is here stated to have reigned only for 40 years as in the majority of the Eastern Chalukya copperplate grants. The verses describing the reign of Vikramaditya (II) are new and not found in any other record of the family so far known. The first of them states that he regained the ancestral throne which had been forcibly seized by Tālapa after killing him. The verses that follow praise his prowess in war in a conventional style, but one interesting fact which one of them (v. 5) discloses is that he fought one hundred battles for eight years and took the kingdom (from his enemies) along with Fame. But it is not possible to say whether this refers to his fight with Tāla or to another war as a result of which he made some conquests and extended his kingdom. If by the expression rājyam kirttyā samam-agrahit, his obtaining the ancestral kingdom is meant we would get an idea of the period of time that was taken by Vikramaditya in regaining the throne from Täla. No doubt the Maliya pūņdi grant of Ammarāja II tells us that Vikramaditya (II) slew " at the head of a rough battle this Tāla-rāja together with crowds of different vassals, who were joined by a superior army (and) had troops of furious elephants". It is, however, not certain whether Vikramaditya was engaged in fighting Täla and his allies after Tāla became king. But all the Eastern Chalukya inscriptions assign to Tāla a reign of only one month. If, however, the rival claimants were engaged in warfare for eight years, it is difficult to guess who ruled the country during this long interval between the period after the ejection of Kanthika-Bēta by Tāla, and the time when the latter succeeded temporarily in seizing the Chalukya throne. No clue to such an interregnum is available from any of the Chalukya records. The question can be solved only by future discoveries.
Of inscription B the second plate is written on both sides, the first and third being written on the inner side only. But the lower half of the second side of the second plate and the upper half of the third plate are left blank. The plates are numbered one, two and three respectively in Kannada numerals. The record, like many other grants of the Vijayanagara kinge, is written in Nandināgari characters except the sign-manual sri-Triyambaka in line 68 which is in
1 Above, Vol. XVIII, p. 56. . Above, Vol. IX, p. 55.
