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No. 22.]
TWO GRANTS OF PRITHIVICHANDRA BHOGASAKTI.
227
Kshēmagiraka and Annagrama and the income derived from certain taxes. The taxes consisted of certain levies during the yātrā festival of the god from every shop in the market and every court-yard(?); and on the import and export of every load of caravan; a handful of corn, and a fixed measure of ghee from (every house in the principal village in each of the sub-divisions of Göparāshtra, Amrarāji, and Mairikā; and in like manner from other villages! ; one hundred Krishnarāja rupees from the sub-division of eastern Trikūta ; two hundred Krishnarāja rupees from the western Mahāgirihāra and one hundred from the eastern one; and fifty Krishnarāja rupees from the Palla Adhamba sub-division. But the above eight villages, on which taxes were thus imposed, were exempted from all the usual exactions of forced labour, etc. A committee of five or ten merchants was enjoined, in accordance with the established custom of the town, to arrange for the yātrā festival of the god Vishņu for a whole fortnight in the month of Mārgaśīrsha. The management of the temple was vested in the merchant guild of the town of Jayapura and the local merchants were exempted from all other state) taxes.
This grant is dated in the year 461 of an unspecified era. Its scribe was Bharatasvāmin, an inhabitant of Kallivana.
The grant B refers to the re-colonisation of the formerly deserted Samagiripattana (the township of Samagiri) along with Chandrapuri and four other hamlets called Ambayapallikā, Savāņāyapallikā, Mauröyapallikā and Kamsāripallikā. All these were vested in the town council of Samagiripattana, the merchants whereof were exempted from the payment of custom duties, the a putradhana, etc. The town council was also empowered to impose fines for certain moral delinquencies and other crimes.
The outer face of the third plate of grant A bears another inscription of nine lines in characters larger in size and slightly different in form from those of the main inscription. It records the grant by king Tējavarman of a free pasture land in the village of Pälittapāțaka near Jayapura, already mentioned in the main inscription. In lieu of this land belonging to the god Bhögēsvara-dēva, who is identical with the Bhöge svara-pratishthita-Nārāyana of the main inscription, one hundred rupees were deposited by him with the merchant guild of Jayapura as a perpetual endowment, the interest of which was to be utilised for providing guggula for the daily worship of the god.
It is interesting to note that Tējavarman, who calls himself a rājan, is mentioned also in grant B wherein he is said to have promulgated the orders contained in the grant. As Bhögasakti and his predecessors also bore no more assuming a title than rājan it is possible that Tējavarman belonged to the same family and might even have been a successor of Bhõgasakti, since his record appears as a postscript to grant A.
The great historical importance of the present grants lies in the fact that they bring to light a new feudatory dynasty which ruled in the latter part of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century A.D. over the vast territory comprising the whole of Puri-könkana consisting of 14,000 villages which apparently included the present Nāsik District under the sovereignty of the Western Chalukyas. The first member of this feudatory family, which was named after Harischandra, was Svāmichandra, who acknowledged the sovereignty of Vikramāditya, the Western Chalukya emperor who, as we know, reigned from 655 to 680 A.D. It is specially noted in the inscriptions that Svāmichandra was loved by his overlord as his own son. The figure of a boar, the emblem of the Chalukya family of Bādāmi, engraved on the reverse of the second plate of Grant A, was probably meant to indicate respect and loyalty to the Imperial dynasty, whereas
[See below p. 235, n. 3.-Ed.]
? [See below p. 237, n. 3,-Ed.]
