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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[VOL. XXXIII
Lines 8-9 state that the Brahmana, i.e. the donee Hastyarya, who would enjoy the produce of the land by putting up a bund to prevent the salt water [from entering the field on the sea-shore] should not be disturbed in his enjoyment by anybody. This is followed by another imprecatory sentence in lines 9-11.
The executor (ajñapti) of the grant was the king himself (line 11). The charter ends with the date (line 11) which is given as the tenth day of the seventh fortnight of Hema, i.e. Hemanta, in the twentyninth year apparently of the king's reign. This year 29 is expressed by the numerical symbols for 20 and 9.
The inscription is important as it introduces a hitherto unknown king of the Maurya dynasty, viz. Anirjitavarman who seems to have held sway somewhere in the western coast about the Goa territory about the 6th or 7th century A.D. Though it is difficult to identify Kumara-dvipa whence the charter was issued, it appears to have been located somewhere in this region. In this connection, we may notice another copper-plate inscription which is also reported to have been discovered in Goa and which belongs to the reign of a king named Chandravarman. It is dated in the second regnal year of the king, Chaitra (?) ba-di 10. On palaeographical grounds, this record may be referred to a date slightly earlier than that of the inscription under study. Its object is to record the donation of some land to the Maha-vihāra at Sivapura which is identified with the modern village of the same name near Chandor in Goa. This shows that Chandravarman was ruling over some part of the Goa territory. Unfortunately the first line of the record which apparently contained the name of the dynasty to which Chandravarman belonged is very badly damaged and effaced. Dr. M.G. Dikshit read two letters in this line as maryya and suggested that the king might have belonged to the early Kadamba dynasty. In a note on this inscription, Dr. D. C. Sircar suggested the reading of the word Mauryya as an alternative to m-aryya and observed that Chandravarman of Goa might have had some relations with the Mauryas of the Konkan. A close examination of the printed facsimile of the record would show that the reading of the word Mauryya in line 1 is almost certain and this no doubt refers to the dynasty to which Chandravarman belonged. Thus we get one Chandravarman of the Maurya dynasty who was also ruling somewhere in the west coast in the Goa territory near about the period of the inscription under study. Except Chandravarman and Anirjitavarman, no other king of this dynasty ruling in the said region at this period is known. But from the Siroda plates of Devaraja and from the recent discovery of a few copper-plate grants of the kings of the Bhoja dynasty, we learn that these Bhoja Lings also held sway somewhere in the Goa territory on the west coast from the fourth to the sixth century A.D. The relations between the two Maurya kings Anirjitavarman and Chandravarman with the Bhōja kings cannot be determined without further light on the subject. It may, however, be noted that, in the celebrated Aihole inscription of Pulakesin II dated in 634 A.D., the king's father Kirtivarman I is described as a night of death to the Mauryas, Nalas and Kadambas of whom the Mauryas were ruling in the Konkan as stated later in the record. Mangalesa and Pulakesin II also are credited with success against these Mauryas. The events took place during the latter half of the sixth century and the first half of the seventh century A.D. It is not impossible that the Mauryas defeated by the early Chalukyan kings belonged to the same branch as that of Anirjita varman and Chandravarman. Since the early Western Chalukyan records do not refer to the defeat of the Bhojas but
1 New Ind. Ant., Vol. IV, pp. 181-84 and Plate.
An. Bh. Or. Res. Inst., Vol. XXIII (Silver Jubilee Volume), pp. 510-13.
Above, Vol. XXIV, pp. 143 ff.; Vol. XXVI, pp. 337 ff.
Ibid., Vol. VI, pp. 4 ff., text line 4.
This event is also referred to in the later records like the Kauthem grant (Ind. Ant., Vol. XVI, pp. 15 ff.) Above, Vol. VI, pp. 4 ff., text lines 6 and 10.
