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No. 34)
TWO SENDRAKA GRANTS
199
one represented in the other three? It is difficult to answer in the affirmative. For, besides the date of the Kasāre grant which is very near to that of the Nägad and the Bagumra grants, the writers and the commanders are practically the same in all the three. Thus the Mahabalādhikrita Vāsava was the person at whose command all the three grants were issued. The Käsärē grant was drafted by one Dévadinna. In the Nägad plates, Dévadinna figures as the minister for peace and war and the charter was drafted by one Mātridatta with the consent of Dévadinna. The draft of the Bagumra grant was also prepared by Dévadinna, the minister for peace and war and the charter adds that Dévadinna was a younger brother of Vasava. I tabulate the above information in order to have a clear idea.
Grant
Do.
Commander
Drafter Kasāré (653 A.C.)
Generalissimo Vásava
Dēvadinna. Bagumra (655 A.C.)
Dēvadinna, the minister for peace and war and the younger brother
of Vasava. Någad (655 A.C.)
Do.
Mātridatta with the consent of
Dévadinna, the minister for peace
and war. Thus it is evident that all the four plates represent one and the same family in spite of a slight variation in the name of the first member of the family in the record under discussion.
In an inscription at Bādāmi (Bijapur) occurs the stray name of one Bhimasakti Sēndrakan who undoubtedly belonged to a Sēndraka family and the same person appears to have been mentioned in other inscriptions of the same place. But I fear that at this stage of our knowledge of the Sēndraka dynasty it is not possible to assign a definite place to this Bhimasakti.
From line 18 begins the description of the grant proper. Nikumbhāllasakti, the last member of the family, who meditated on the feet of his parents, who was a great devotee of Mahēsvara, who had acquired the five great sounds and who was the master of the earth, with a view to acquire merit for himself as well as for his parents, gave fifty nivarttanas of land lying to the south of the river at the village Pippalakhēta to the Brāhmana Bälapravasita, of the Krishņātrēya götra and of the Mädhyandina branch of the Vājasaneyi Samhitā, i.e., white Yajurvēda, for the upabhöga of the god Langhyēsvara. The phrase samāvāptapanchamahāśabdah clearly indicates that the last member was a feudatory prince, apparently of the Western Chālukyas of Bādāmi.
The date on which the grant was issued is denoted by two symbols (1.31). The first symbol undoubtedly represents 400. The second symbol must be taken to represent 4. It is appended with a zig-zag horizontal line at the upper right corner and if this line has been appended purposely the symbol probably represents the number 70. But then we would be confronted with insurmountable difficulties. I, therefore, take the second symbol to represent 4. Thus the year will be 404. The further details of the date are the new-moon day of the month Ashādha and the solar eclipse. To what particular era this year of the grant is to be referred ? In the Nāgad and the Mundakhēdē plates, though no era has been specified, the years 577 and 602 which occur in them can easily be referred to the Saka era. In the Bagumra grant also though no era has been specified, the year 406 in which it is dated must be taken to belong to the Kalachuri era. The year 404, the date of this grant must also be referred to the same era as both the grants have many points of similarity as shown above. If, according to Prof. Mirashi's calculations, we grant that the initial year of this era began on 6-10-248 A.C., we must add 249 to 404 to get a date in Ashādha of that year. According to the purnimānta system of reckoning Hindu months, the new-moon
1 Annual Report on South Indian Epigraphy, for the year 1928-29, Appendix E, Nos. 125, 101, 126, 127.
Above, Vol. XXIV, p. 12.
