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No. 5]
THREE GRANTS FROM CHINCH ANİ Siva or Vishnu). The language of the passage recording the grant, which follows in lines 30 ff., is defective; but it apparently means to say that the amount of three drammas received by the government as siridika (the same as siridirkā of the previous record, meaning a sort of tax or cess) on account of the village of Köņasă-grāma in the possession of the Kautuka-mathika was granted in favour of the householders and scholars attached to the mathika in the form of a permanent endowment for the purpose of feeding 25 Brāhmaṇas probably per day. It will be seen that Kautuka's mathikā at Samyana is mentioned in all the five grants discovered at Chinchani, including the three edited here, although, in the second of the three epigraphs now under study, the name Kautuka is spelt as Kavatika. The endowment has been called a bhojan-akshayani or bhojanākshayani, the word akshayani or akshayani being & corruption of Sanskrit akshaya-nivi meaning 'a permanent endowment'. The expression thus means a permanent endowment created for the purpose of providing food free of cost. In line 42, the endowment is referred to merely as bhojana and in line 46 as grāsa.
The following section in lines 33-47 in prose and verse contains some more of the benedictory and imprecatory stanzas. Lines 47-48 contain the statement that the donor's decree was contained in the text of the document as written by one of his officers styled Dhruva (i. e. the collector of the royal share of the produce from the farmers). This is followed in lines 48-49 by the sentence : "Confirmed by me, the Mandalēšvara, the illustrious Vijja-rāņaka', in the well-known style of putting the signature of the donor on a document later engraved on copper plates. The next sentence says that Dhruva Mammalaiya wrote the document at the request of both the parties (i.e. the donor and the donees) under orders of Mandalesvaru Vija-räpaka. It is further stated in line 50 that the text of the charter was to be regarded as authoritative. The record ends with & mangala of the usual type.
Of the geographical names mentioned in the charter, the most interesting is the Saryanapattana 700 forming a mandala consisting of 4000 drangas. It was apparently the district round the town of Samyana (Sanjan). But it is difficult to explain the passage used in the inscription to indicate the territorial unit. We know that expressions like 'Samyana-pattana 709' normally meant 'the Samyana-pattana division consisting of 700 villages or hamlets' although the number may have been conventional or exaggerated. But the word dranga generally means 'a towa' and it is impossible to believe that a territorial division consisting only of 700 villages or hamlets contained as may as 4000 towns. It therefore seems that dranga in the inscription is a mistake for dramma. The intended meaning of the passage in question may therefore be that the annual revenue income of the territory under the rule of the Möạba chief of the Samyana district consisting of 700 villages or hamlets was 4000 rammas possibly meaning coins of silver. A locality called Akaśikā is stated to have stood on the borders of the said district. The donor seems to have made a permanent endowment out of the siridikā tax or cess amounting to 3 drammas, probably payable annually or periodically to the government by the Kautuka-mathika at Samyäna on account of a village called Kapasā-gräma in its possession. I am not sure about the location of this village.
TEXT:
Metres : verses 1, 3-9, 12-16 Anushţubh; verse 2 Vamastha ; verse 10 Pushpitāgrā, verse 11 Salini.)
1 Soo JBRS, Vol. XL, part i, pp. 9 f. . From impressions.
