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No. 12-HULGUR INSCRIPTION OF KHOTTIGA, SAKA 893
(1 Plate)
G. S. GAI, OOTACAMUND
(Received on 26.6.1959)
The inscription which is edited below was copied by me during the year 1944-45 in the course of my official tour in search of inscriptions. It is engraved on a stone slab in the field of Allikatti at Hulgur, a village about 9 miles to the north-east of Shiggaon, the headquarters of the Taluk of the same name in the Dharwar District, Mysore State. The writing covers an area about 2'6" by 2'3". There are 21 lines of writing and, except a small portion at the lower right-hand corner affecting the last four lines of the imprecatory portion, the writing is well preserved.
The characters are Kannada Telugu of the 10th century A. D. and are quite regular for the • period. Noteworthy is the top mātrā (tale-katfu) which is rather angular. Initial i occurs in lines
9 and 13 and initial e in line 2. Finalt is met with in line 14 and final / in lines 9, 11 and 17. In some cases, anusvāra has been used for the class nasals ; cf. lines 1, 3 and 8. Except the last imprecatory verse in Sanskrit, the language of the record is Kannada and is partly in verse and partly in prose. There are six verses in the Kanda metre in lines 1-11 and a section in prose in lines 11-18. As regards orthography, the consonant following is reduplicated in many cases.
Verse 1 introduces the ruling king Khoftigadēva as the younger brother of Krishna. Though the dynasty to which he belonged is not stated in the record, there can be no doubt that he was the Rashtrakūta king of that name' who succeeded his brother Krishna III (939-67 A. D.) and ruled in 967-72 A. D. When Fleet wrote his Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts, only one record of Khottiga was published. But now we have quite a few inscriptions belonging to his reign. The present record, however, does not supply any new information, historical or chronological, with regard to the reign of Khottiga. Verse 2 refers to his title Nityavarsha and mencions his feudatory Guttiya-Ganga, called Gang-ādhipa. This Guttiya-Ganga was no other than the Western Gariga chief Mārasimha II (963-75 A. D.) who is known to have been a feudatory of Krishna III ajan. Pient suggested that the word Guttiya in the secondary name of the chief may refer to the town of Gutti in the Bellary District. Besides Guttiye-Ganga, Mārasimha had many birudas like
1 The inscription has been noticed in A. R. Ep., 1944-45, No. F 21, and in Ancient India, No. 5, p. 55.
* For this feature, cf. the Korumelli plates of the Eastern Chalukya king Rajaraja II (Ind. Ant., Vol. XIV, Pp. 48 ff. and Plates).
• The name is Kottiga here but is spelt in epigraphic records generally as Khottiga and sometimes also as Khotikas
. Bom. Gaz., Vol. I, Part II, p. 422 ; Ind. Ant., Vol. XII, pp. 255-56. * See SII, Vol. XI, Part.I, No. 41-44 ; Vol. IX, Part I, Nos. 70-71; above Vol. XXI, pp. 260 ft. • Above, Vol. V, p. 168 and note 3.
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