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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
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for the god Märkandesvara. The name of queen Umā, however, seems to suggest that the king mentioned in the record is really Bhanu III (c.1352-78 A.D). Visvanatha-kavirāja, who wrote his Chandrakalā-näfika during the reign of Gajapati Nihsanka-Bhānu (i.e. Ganga Bhanu IV reigning upto 1434-35 A.D.),' quotes in his Sähityadarpana,' composed some time afterwards,' a stanza referring to Umädēvi's husband Bhānu, as a contemporary ruler, from a work of his own father Chandrasēkhara-sandhivigrahin. Apparently the same Umādēvi is mentioned in the Bhubaneswar Pärvati temple inscription of the 13th Anka year of the king named Bhanu and in the Simhachalam inscription of Saka 1301, Märgabirsha ba. I, Friday (25th November 1379 A.D.) falling in the reign of Narasimha IV (c. 1378-1402 A.D.). It thus appears that Umädēvi's husband Bhanu should be identified with Bhānu III, the father of Narasimha IV and grandfather of Bhānu IV, as suggested by Rajaguru and Das.
The inscription of Chodaganga, which forms the main subject of this article, contains nine lines of writing. The inscribed area covers & space about 131 inches in height and 32 inches in length. Individual aksharas are about 14 inches in height. The characters of the record are Gaudiya and its language is Sanskrit. But it exhibits considerable influence of the local language and is full of grammatical and orthographical errors. In some of the sentences, the language is actually a mixture of Sanskrit and Oriya and often the meaning has to be conjectured. The date in line 1, given in the king's regnal reckoning, also offers some difficulty. The regnal year is written in two figures, the second of which is clearly 7. The first figure is exactly the same as found in the same date occurring in the Bhubaneswar inscription of Anantavarman Chōdaganga, which has been published in the pages of this journal. This doubtful figure has some resemblance with the shape of 5, 80 that the date in both the Bhubaneswar epigraph and the present inscription would appear to be the regnal year 57. But the Bhubaneswar inscription shows that the same yearof Chödaganga's reign corresponded to the Saka year indicated by the chronogram ritu-Rāma-khëndu, i.e. Saka 1036-1114-15 A.D. Since the said Saka year coresponded to the thirtyseventh and not fiftyseventh regnal year of Chödaganga who ascended the throne in 1078 A.D., the first figure in the number in question had to be read as 3. In view of this, Chodaganga's regnal year quoted in the inscription under study should also have to be read as 37. Thus the epigraph appears to have been engraved in 1114-15 A.D.
The inscription begins with the Siddham symbol and the date referred to above. The first sentence in lines 1-4 apparently means to say that, in the year 37 during the reign of the illustrious Chodagangadēva, Sadhu Bhimadēva, & resident of Niralo-grāma called an Angabhöga of the god Purushottama, as well as Ruda (Rudra?) and Hari (both probably of the same place) accepted some amount or coins of gold for one chhāyā-dipa meant to be a perpetual lamp to be burnt before the god Märkandēsvara. The epithet sädhu applied to Bhimadēva shows that he belonged to the mercantile community. Possibly Ruda and Hari were also members of the same community. The expression anga-bhoga often occurs in Telugu and Kannada inscriptions in association with ranga-bhoga and arga-ranga-bhoga is sometimes translated as 'decorations and illuminations of a god'.. 'In the present case, the epithet anga-bhöga is applied to a village, the income from which appears to have been utilised for the anga-bhoga or decoration of the deity in question.
1 Seo JOHR, Vol. VI, Appendix, pp. i ff. . Cf. Kane's ed., 1923, pp. 13-14. • Verges from the Chandrakala-nātikā are quoted in the Sahityadarpana. Cf. JOHR, Vol. III, p. 49. Umādēvf is here wrongly taken to be the name of goddess Parvati.
SII, Vol. VI, No. 730. Umādēvl's relation with king Narasimha is not stated in the inscription. • JOHR, Vol. VI, Appendix, pp. 7-vi. Another known queen of Bhānu III Was Hirädevi. *Above, Vol. XXX, pp. 29 ff. (No. 1), and Plate facing p. 32.
Cf. Sreenivasachar, A Corpus of Inscriptions in the Telingana District, Part II, p. 201. For bhoga, 'a jāgir', cf. above, p. 170.
