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No. 21) TURIMELLA INSCRIPTION OF CHALUKYA VIKRAMADITYA I; YEAR 2 161
The language of the introductory portion of the inscription is Telugu and of the operative part of it is Sanskrit. The record ends with the usual imprecatory verse svadattań paradattāṁ vi, etc., attributed to Vyāsa. As in early Telugu records, we meet here with such archaio expressions as Bhataruļākun, samvatsarambul, élan, eto. The donative part of the record consists of a single sentence in Sanskrit which is neither accurate in its syntax nor precise in its expression, using the nominative singular māta in place of the instrumental mātrā and the expression Bhatfaraho," for Bhattarakāya. The object of the inscription is a gift of 150 units of land to GÖvri. shipa-Bhattáraka by the mother of Ujēnipiśācha, the dear son of Alakumara and the right-hand man of Goggi-Bhatāra, in the second augmenting year of the reign of Satyasraya Prithivivallabha Mahārājādhirāja Vikramaditya Paramisvara Bhatāra when Ujēnipisācha was ruling over the Eruva vishaya with the city (nagara) [Turu]tataka as its capital (adhisthāna).
Among the Chālukyas of Bādāmi, only two kings bore the name Vikramaditya. The first was the son of Pulakēsin II, the conqueror of Harshavardhana of Kanyakubja and many other kings both of the north and the south, among whom were the Māļavas. There are as many as ten copper-plate grants issued by this Vikramaditya,' of which some are spurious. But of stone records pertaining to his reign, strangely enough, there are incredibly few. Indeed the only stone inscription that could be definitely assigned to Vikramiditya I is the Dimmagudi record,. for, it is dated in the 27th year of the reign of a Vikramiditya Satyasraya who could be no other than the first of this name inasmuch as his namesake and great-grandson, Vikramaditya II, reigned only for a little more than a decade, 734 to 747 A.C. This inscription, it is worth observ. ing, gives the latest date so far known for Vikramāditya I, two years beyond the date (680 A. C.) hitherto assigned to him. A close comparison, in the formation of individual letters, of this record? with the Turime'la inscription reveals certain interesting features. Apart from the similarity of the letters in general in both, a certain development in the palaeographic features of the Dimmagudi epigraph such as the later and more developed form, in place of the closed archaic four chambered shape, ofmarks it definitely later than the Turime!!a record, later at least by a quarter of a century. In other words, the record under review is earlier than the Dimmaguļi inscription by at least 25 years and therefore belongs to the early years of the reign of Vikramaditya I, to wit, his second year as the record itself states. That this is indeed so could easily be confirmed by a glance at the general get up and the forms of individual letters in this and in the Aihole inscription of Pulakēsin II.
1 Above, Vol. XI, p. 346, and Vol. XXVII, pp. 225 ff.
* Bhaffäraho, the nominative singular in Prakrit for Bhat farukal, would not fit in here ; it should have been Bhaffarassa to convey the dative or the genitive sense in Prakrit.
• The word expressing units of measurement seems to have been omitted in the text after sata-panchabut before kshetram.
• Ind. Ant., Vol. VIII, p. 241. Most of the coper-plato grants of Pulskēsin's successors rocount these exploits while describing the king.
Subsequent to Kielhorn's List (above, Vol. VII, Appendix, p. 5, Nos. 18 to 22), five more records have como to light and they are (1) the Madras Museum plate (C.P. No. 9 of 1906-07); (2) the Talamafichi plates (C.P. No. 8 of 1906-07; above, Vol. IX, pp. 98 ff.); (3) the Gadval plates (C. P. No. 3 of 1909-10, above, Vol. X, p. 109 f.); (4) the Savanur plates (abovo, Vol. XXVII, p. 155 ff.), and (5) the Honnur plates (Mys. Arch. Rep., 1939, pp. 129 ff.). Of these the first is considered spurious. .
No. 364 of 1920 of the Madras Epigraphical Collection ; SII, Vol. X, No. 24, app. p. xxv. An inscription on a hero-stone at Annavaram-agrabáram in the Nellore District has been assigned on palacographical grounds to this king (Ann. Rep. on S.I. E., 1933-34, p. 29 and plate) But the later developed forms of j and I found in this record make such an assignment highly improbable. The record may, on the contrary, be assigned to Vikramaditya II in whose inscriptions the later forms of these letters occasionally appear.
* Plato opposite p. 163 below. . Abov, Vol. VI plato opposite p. .
