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No. 29] TALANGERE INSCRIPTION OF JAYASIMHA
206 In the sentence Ormme Jogavveya vaṁsado!-pen-gūsugal-allade gandu-gūsugala van sak! adihāram=allade salladu, the second allade appears to be superfluous. But such usage might have been the prevalent idiom as attested to by the double usage of men (meaning'or' and later on ' and ') occurring in the sentences given below : (1) osege mên munige men, (2) palige mēn pogalge mēn, (3) ose mēn muni mën', wherein the use of mēn twice is analogous to that of either' and 'or occurring simultaneously in English syntax.
A few words of lexical interest ocour in this record and deserve careful study: (1) mora (line 9) seems to be connected with moradit and modu (Tuļu) both meaning a hillock'; (2) oval from the contexts (lines 10, 13, 15) seems to mean brackish '. It appears to be related to the first member ulai of the Tamil compound word ulai-man, ula-man, meaning 'salty or braokish Boil'; (3) chāvugāmi (line 16) is derived from the Sanskrit chatur-grāmin ; (4) urmme (line 26) has been translated as excellent'. This seems to descend from the Dravidian root úru meaning to increase ', by the addition of the suffix -me used to form abstract nouns. As the final -4 of the root is unstable and not radical the noun ürme is directly formed, meaning increase, abundance'. It is in this sense that Pampa has employed the word in the phrase vilāsad-urmegal-o!and the reading here with short u in the beginning may be a mistake. The variant reading perme found in two of the manuscripts of this work is only a substitution of a synonym and is confirmatory of the meaning deduced above. (5) Adihāra (line 27) is obviously a corruption of the Sanskrit word adhikara.
The importance of this record to the student of Kannada prosody cannot be overstated. The Sārdülavikridita of the first verse and the Kandas following are quite familiar in Kannada metrics ; but verse No. 4 is not so and is a rare specimen. It is called utsäha by the composer of the inscription and demands close scrutiny. Nāgavarma has defined the metre and the definition itself is the illustration. According to him the verse has four lines, each consisting of seven Brahma-ganas plus one guru, with rhyme in the second syllable. Of the four varieties of the Brahma-gana ( UU -Uuuu) only two containing three syllables or matras are used here and the other two consisting of four syllables or mätrās are eschewed altogether. The iambic variety (0 ) though containing 3 mātrās does not enter into the scheme of Brahma. gana. The utsäha of the present record is in conformity with the above definition. The 1st, 3rd and 4th lines are quite regular and it is enough to show the scansion of one of them: viz., the first line. 1 2 3 4 5 6
7 Ural kadeya | toreya tadiya 1 kariya | kalla | mõra dim
- uuu uuu uuu uuu - - - The tāla or accent falls on the first syllable of every foot. The second line, however, has an extra long syllable in the first foot: 2
Puttūral poleya |
r-ippa
kēri.
y-ovala
nīra |
bhūmi
yam
1 Kavirajamarga (Ed. Pathak, Bangalore), I-134. * Ibid., 1-135. • Pampa-Bharata (Kannada Sahitya Parishad ed.), VI-26.
• Kittel has spelt this word with a cerebral or alveolar -ra in the middle bnt it is highly doubtful. Janna, a famous poet and composer of the Tarikere inscription of 1197 A. C. has in verse 62 definitely uned the word with a retroflex -ra. in the rhyming place,
* Pampa-Bharata (Kannada Sahitya Parishad ed.), I-106.
Chhandombudhi: Kavya Kalanidhi edition, verse 208.
