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No. 28.)
A NOTE ON THE SOMAVAMSI KINGS OF SOUTHERN KOSALA.
227
No. 28.- A NOTE ON THE DATE OF THE SOMAVAMSI KINGS OF SOUTHERN KOSALA.
By Prof. V. V. MIRASHI, M.A., NAGPUR. In his article on the date of the Pandava or Sömavamsi kings of Southern Kösala, Mr. A. Ghosh has attempted to show that the date (viz., the second quarter of the sixth century A. D.) which I had tentatively assigned to Tivaradēva of the Sõmavaṁsi dynasty is too early. According to him Tivaradēva may be placed in the last quarter of the seventh century A. D.
The main argument advanced by Mr. Gbosh is paleographical. He has shown by a palæographical chart that the test letters bh, y, 6, 8, and h in the so-called Bhandak inscription of Nannarājādbirāja, the father of Tivaradēva and the Sirpur inscription of Mahā-Sivagupta alias Bālārjuna, the grand-nephew of Tivaradēva, are more developed than those of the Arang copper-plate inscription of Bhimasēna II. This latter inscription comes from Chhattisgarh and as such its evidence is most valuable. Following the late R. B. Hiralal who has edited the plates in this Journal, Mr. Ghosh takes the date of this inscription to correspond to A. D. 601. As the inscription of Nannarāja exhibits more developed forms of the test letters, Mr. Ghosh thinks that the ascription of that inscription to a date earlier than A. D. 650 is a palæographical impossibility. He therefore tentatively places Tivaradēva, the son of Nannarāja or Nannadēva, in the last quarter of the seventh century A. D.
It is indeed true that the aforementioned test letters have more developed forms in the inscriptions of Nannarāja and Maha-Sivagupta-Bālārjuna, but these inscriptions need not on that account be referred to a date later than A. D. 650. As the accompanying palæographical charts will show, these test letters had assumed these later forms even before A. D. 600, for we find all of them in the Bodh Gayā inscription of Mahanaman, dated A. D. 588. In this inscription bh and have a hollow wedge attached to the left corner; y has become bipartite; & in some cases shows its right vertical stroke projecting a little above its top and the right limb of h hangs down. The same developed forms are noticed in the Madhuban plate of Harsha, dated A. D. 631°. It may be objected that both these inscriptions come from North India and consequently their evidence is inadmissible for fixing the date of such southern records as the inscriptions of Nannarāja and Maba-Sivagupta. I would, in that case, invite attention to the forms of the test letters in the plates of the time of Sasanka, dated A. D. 619-20. which come from the Ganjam District. In all these inscriptions which range in dates from A. D. 588 to 631, we find the same developed forms of the test letters that we notice in the inscriptions
1 Above, Vol. XXV, pp. 266 ff.
J.R. 4. 8., for 1905, pp. 617 ff. As I have shown olsewhere (above, Vol. XXIII, pp. 116 ff.), the inscription did not probably belong to Bhandak, but came originally from some place in Chhattisgarh.
After this note was sent to the press, my friend Mr. Y. K. Deshpande of Yeotmal who has recently returned from England supplied me an extract from a manuscript (Marathi, D 46) deposited in the India Office Library, London. This MS. contains an account of the inscriptions in Chhattisgarh by Vinayakrao Aurangahadkar who was in the service of Mr. Richard Jenkins, the British Resident at Nagpur from 1807 to 1826. In this account Aurangabadkar states that the stone slab containing the inscription of Bhavadeva was affixed to A large temple at Arang. He gives a transcript and a short description of the contents of this record which leave no doubt about its identity. This has unexpectedly corroborated my conjecture about the provenance of this inscription which was long in doubt.
. Above, Vol. XI, pp. 184 ff. . Ibid., Vol. IX, pp. 342 ff.
The lettera in this chart have been tracell as accurately ay possible from the published facsimile plates of the recorde.
• Above, Vol. VII, p. 158.
