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No. 26.]
DATE OF THE PANDAVA KINGS OF SOUTHERN KOSALA.
269
It will be readily admitted that it is not strictly scientific to compare the Härāhā inscription with the inscriptions of the Pandavas owing to the great distance separating them; but if it were allowed, it could be easily shown that the Häräha inscription is distinctly earlier, so that Suryavarman could not have been a contemporary of Harshagupta.
It is clear, therefore, that the ascription of the Bhandak inscription to a date earlier than A.D. 650, i.e. at least fifty years after the date of the Arang plates of Bhimasēna, is a palæographical impossibility. Tivara, therefore, may be tentatively placed in the last quarter of the seventh century A.D.
We may now proceed to examine some incidental facts and identifications arising out of these tentative dates.
1. Some scholars have found a reference to Tivara in the Pulōmburu and Ipür grants of the Vishnukuṇḍin Madhavavarman,' which refer to an invasion of the city of Trivara by Madhavavarman.2 But from the wordings in the inscriptions it is not certain that the expression Trivara-nagara should be taken to mean the city of King Trivara' and not the city called Trivara'. King Tivara of the Lunar race, who is proposed for identification with this Trivara, is not known to have founded a city of his own; 3 on the other hand, the city of Sripura was the capital of Southern Kōsala before, during and after the reign of Tivara. It appears to me that there is much probability in the view that Trivara is a place-name, being a partial Prakritization of Tripuri, and giving rise in due course to Tiwar or Tewar, by which name the ancient Tripuri is now known. Even assuming that Trivara in the above inscriptions is the name of some king or prince, there is little likelihood of his being identical with the Pandava Tivara, in view of the fact that the date of the Pulōmburu grant is most probably A.D. 594," which is much too early for one who, according to the chronology proposed here, flourished towards the end of the seventh century.
2. The Kōndēḍda and Nivina plates of the Sailōdbhava king Dharmaraja say that Madhava, the younger brother of the king, became a rebel; being defeated at Phasika he took shelter with another king Trivara, but was again defeated along with Trivara at the foot of the Vindhyas. Dr. N. P. Chakravarti, the editor of the Nivinä plates, proposes to identify this Trīvara with Tivara of Southern Kōsala. Dharmaraja, being the grandson of Madhava-Sainyabhita II, the author of the Ganjam plates of A.D. 619," must have flourished in the latter
1 Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, Vol. VI, p. 20; above, Vol. XVII, p. 336. Cf. above, Vol. XXII, p. 19.
3 For this reason the analogy of Pravarapura and Yayatinagara cited by R. 8. Panchamukhi (above, Vol. XXIII, p. 90, n. 5.) cannot stand. Nor is it possible to agree with him (loc. cit., p. 91, n. 6) that the superscript i-sign in Trivara is distinctly long in the Pulōmburu and Ipar grants. In the latter, at any rate, it is clearly short.
Cf. Journal of the Department of Letters, Calcutta University, Vol. XI, p. 63.
R. S. Panchamukhi (loc. cit.) tries to prove that the date of the grant is A.D. 621, as 594 is too early to be the forty-eighth year of the king who was defeated in c. 631 by Pulakesin II or his brother Kubja-Vishnuvardhana. As Pulakesin's conquest of Kalinga, Kōsala, Pishtapura, Kupala and Kanchipura, recorded in vv. 26 and 27 of the Aihole inscription (above, Vol. VI, p. 6), were effected in one and the same expedition, and as Vishnuvardhana was the governor of Vengi from c. 916 to 633 (cf. D. C. Ganguly, I. H. Q., Vol. VIII, p. 442), it seems very likely that the Vishnukundins were ousted by the Chalukyas in c. 615. The fact that the son of the donee of the Pulomburu grant of Madhavavarman was the recipient of the same village in the reign of Jayasimha, the son of Vishnuvardhana, (above, Vol. XIX, p. 254), does not prove that Madhavavarman just preceded Jayasimha in time: the two kings might well have been separated by two short reigns of a successor of Madhavavarman and of the Chalukya Vishnuvardhana. [But Jayasimha is definitely known to be the successor of Vishnuvardhana.-N. L. R.]
Or Trivara, as the word is spelt in the Nivină grant.
7 Above, Vol. VI, p. 143.
