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No. 4]
HARASUR INSCRIPTION OF KING SOMA NO. HARASUR INSCRIPTION OF KING SOMA
(1 Plate)
P. B. DESAI, OOTACAMUND The epigraph was found on a piece of stone built into the platform in front of the temple of Anantajayana at Harasūr, a village in the Gulbarga District of the Nizam's Dominions. I visited this place in 1933 when I was a college student and copied the inscription. I am editing it here for the first time from ink-impressions prepared by me.
The inscription is incised in Nandi-Nagari characters of the 12th century A. D. There are few orthographical peculiarities to be noted. Except in a few instances (e. g., cerebral n) the convention of doubling a consonant combined with ris generally not observed. The language is Sanskrit and the whole composition is in verse of the ornate classical style. The poetry is not of high order and the writing contains some errors. As a part of the stone bearing the inscription is broken and lost, the record is incomplete. In lines 17-20 a few aksharas at either end are damaged and missing. Even in the absence of explicit statement to the effect in the inscription, it is clear that the charter belongs to the southern Kalachuri dynasty familiarly known as the Kalachuryas of Kalyana. Save two copper plate documents which are in Sanskrit, the epigraphs of this family are generally in Kannada. So this claims to be the first stone record of the house in Sanskrit so far discovered.
The epigraph describes the origin and the genealogy of the Kalachuri family. The genealogy stops with the king Sõma or Somēśvara who bore the biruda Rāya-Murări. Then we are introduced to the king's minister and general Madhava. In the following passage the poet refers to a temple of Vishņue constructed by Madhava and indulges in describing the beauty of its golden pinnacle (verse 14). The lost portion of the epigraph appears to have contained information regarding the provision made for its maintenance by Madhava.
If the record bore a date, it must have been obviously in the lost portion. However, it is clear from the genealogical context that it was drafted during the regnal period of the Kalachuri king Räya-Murări Sõvidēva (Sõměsvara) who is known from other sources to have ruled from A.D. 1167 to 1176.
Damaged and incomplete as the record is, it is highly important in as much as it draws in, directly and indirectly, much new material for the reconstruction of the history of the southern Kalachuris, which is still shrouded in mystery. The statement regarding the origin of the family
Inscriptions copied at Haragür have found their place in the Mackenzie Collection preserved in the University of Madras. But this in sription in particular appears to have escaped the notice of the copyists. I am indebted for this information to Mr. M. Venkataramayya.
Not Kalyani as is often mentioned; for the correct name of the place is Kalyana. The above name of the family can not stand fall justification. Firstly, the family is not always referred to as Kalachurya, which is supposed to have been derived from Kalachuri. The nam: Kalachuri is met with in a large number of epigraphs ; which shows that both the forms were in use simultaneously. Secondly, Kalyana was not the one and the only capital of these rulers. In fact Kalyana enjoyed this privilege for a brief period during the reign of Bijjala II. Even ho had his alternate headquarters at Mangalavédhe (Sangli State, near Pandharpur), which was the original and long-standing capital for many princes of this house. Hence, the Southern Kalachuris or Kalachuris of Karnataka would, in my opinion, be a better denomination of this family.
* Ind. Ant., Vol. IV, p. 274 and J. B. B. R. A. 8. (Old Soriss), Vol. XVIII, p. 269.
• The present day Anantasayana temple, near whish the inscription was found, most probably ropresents tho Vishņu temple.
More details about this Madhava are known from another inscription at Harasûr, found in the Bhögēsvara temple. These will be utilised in a later context. Madhava figures in this epigraph as one of the dono date of this epigraph is A.). 1172. As the present epigraph might have come into existence about the same time, wo may place it somewhere about that year.
No systematic attempt to reconstruct the history of the family from the sources discovered during the past half a century bas so far been made. The account of the late Dr. Fleet (Bom. Gaz., Vol. I, pt. II) deserves to be thuroughly Noviaed.
