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No. 25]
SALEM PLATES OF GANGA SRIPURUSHA: SAKA 693
and when it is long. It is yet to be investigated whether this feature has anything to do with accent and why it is met with in some speech-forms and not in others. The following instances, however, show the consonant after r to be short or single: ratn-ārka l. 26, and nṛipatir-babhüva 1. 39.
147
The inscription belongs to the time of the Western Ganga king Śrīpurusha. A good number of inscriptions, on stone and copper, of the time of this king, varying in dates from the beginning to the end of his long reign, have been discovered and published, specially in the volumes of the Epigraphia Carnatica and the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Mysore. The genealogy of the Ganga kings given in the present record, from Konganivarma-Dharma-Mahadhiraja up to Śrīpurusha, is already known from published records. No fresh historical facts, either with reference to the earlier members of the family or with reference to the king Sripurusha, come to light in this record. Duggamara is mentioned in 11. 44-5, and, from the expression putrāya Duggamārāya in 1. 48, there can be no doubt that this Duggamara was no other than one of Śrīpurusha's sons of that name. We learn from two stone inscriptions from Mulbagal in the Kolar District of the Mysore State that this Duggamara was governing Kuvaļāla-nāḍu 300 and Ganga 6000 under his father
The wife of Duggamara was Kañchiyabba who is described in ll. 44-6. She was to him as Padma was to Nārāyaṇa, Gauri to Pinākin, etc. One of the two Mulbagal inscriptions3 referred to above states that Kanchiyabbe, wife of Duggamara, was governing Agali. The importance of the present record lies in the fact that it gives in II. 38-44 the pedigree of this Kanchiyabba for three generations, starting from king Nannappa, who had a son Sivaraja, whose son was Govindaraja. Govindaraja's wife was Vinayavati whose father was king Vikramaditya, 'lord of the four directions'. To Govindaraja and Vinayavati was born Indaraja, and Indaraja's elder sister was Kañchiyabba, consort of Duggamāra. The way in which these princes are mentioned shows that they belonged to a royal family. In the present state of our knowledge it is indeed difficult to identify them. The names Nannappa, Govinda and Indaraja are, however, reminiscent of similar names in the Rashtrakuta dynasty." But we do not know of any Nannappa who lived towards the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century A. D. with whose family the Western Gangas had to do anything either matrimonially or politically.
1 Cf. Spurious Islampur plates of Vijayaditya; above, Vol. XII, pp. 50-3; Devarahalli plates of Sripurusha E. C., IV, Ng. 85.
2 E. C., X, Kl. Mb. 80 and 255.
3 E. C., X, Kl. Mb. 80.
4 The Daulatabad plates of Sankaragana (above, Vol. IX, p. 197) inform us that the paternal uncle of (Dhruva-) Nirupama was Nanna, brother of Krishnaraja (I) and son of Kakkarāja (I). Sankaraganarāja is mentioned therein as the son of Nanna. The Tiwarkhed and Multai plates (above, Vol. XI, p. 279; Ind. Ant., Vol. XVIII, p. 234) also mention a certain Nannarāja, whose father was Svamikarāja, grandfather Govindaraja and great-grandfather Durgaraja.
5 End of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century A. D. is the period to which Nannappa of our inscription can be assigned, as his great-granddaughter Kañchiyabba lived in A. D. 771, the date of the record. The Daulata. bad plates referred to in the previous footnote are dated in Saka 715 or A. D. 793 and so the Nanna mentioned therein will be too late for the Nannappa of our record. Similarly Nannaraja of the Tiwarkhed plates dated in Saka 553 or A. D. 631 will be too early. The date of the Multai plates, viz., Šaka 631 or A. D. 709-10, however, agrees with the period to which we have assigned Nannappa of our inscription. The Multai plates have been considered to be not genuine (Altekar, Rashtrakutas, p. 7). If we assume that the date supplied by the Multai plates is genuine, then the Nannaräja mentioned therein can be identified with Nannappa of our record, since there is no difficulty about the period of the two names. This identification can gain further support from the fact that the name Govindaraja, grandfather of Nannaraja of the Multai plates, is repeated in our inscription in the name of the grandson of Nannappa. But, so far, we have not come across any reference about the Western Gangas coming in contact with the Rashtrakuta family situated so far in the north as Multai in the Central Provinces and, in view of this, it becomes difficult to uphold the above identification.
