________________
No. 18-MUDGAPADRA GRANT OF YUVARAJA SRYASRAYA SILADITYA
(1 Plate)
D. C. SIRCAR, OOTACAMUND
(Received on 4. 1. 1959)
In August 1959, Mr. Nathubhai Umaji Shah of Karchelia in the Mahuwa Tahsil of the Surat District, Bombay State, sent me a set of two copper plates for examination. The two rings that must have originally held the plates together and the seal expected to have been affixed to one of them were not available to me. I had also no information regarding the exact findspot of the inscription and the circumstances leading to its discovery.
The two plates of the set measure each about 8.5 inches in length and 5.1 inches in height. They have two ring-holes in the margin, which are respectively 4 and 5 inch in diameter, the intervening gap between them being about 2.5 inches. The plates have writing only on the inner side. The weight of the two plates together is 72 tolas.
There are 21 lines of writing, 9 lines on the first and 12 on the second. The characters of the inscription belong to the West Indian variety of the early Telugu-Kannada alphabet of the seventh century A.D. The language is Sanskrit and the record is written in a mixture of prose and verse. The orthography is similar to that of other epigraphs of the age and area in question. The text of the record is full of errors of omission and commission. The style is similar to the published records of the donor. But the introductory part of the present record is somewhat smaller than in the other inscriptions of the family. The date of the grant is quoted in lines 20-21 as the 7th day of the bright fortnight of Jyeshtha in the year 420 expressed in words only. The year has to be referred to the Kalachuri era which, as Keilhorn has shown, started from the 13th August 249 A.D. Thus the year 420 of the Kalachuri era would be equivalent to 668-69 A.D. and Jyeshtha-sudi 7 of the said year corresponds to the 23rd May 668 A.D. This is the earliest record of the Chalukya house of Gujarat and the date is of considerable importance in as much as, as will be seen below, it proves that a generally accepted theory about the history of the family in question is wrong.
The charter was issued by Yuvaraja Śryasraya Śladitya of the Chalikya or Chalukya dynasty. He was the son of Dharäsraya Jayasimhavarman and grandson of the Chalukya emperor Satyasraya Pulakesin II (610-42 A.D.) of Bādāmi. The Nasik plates of Dharaśraya Jayasimhavarmaraja, dated in the Kalachuri year 436-684-85 A.D. (actually Chaitra-sudi 10 of 685 A.D.), mention the donor as meditating on the feet of his parents and of the illustrious Anivärita who is no other than the Chalukya emperor Vikramaditya I (655-81 A.D.) as suggested by the latter's own inscriptions. At the time the charter was issued, Jayasimhavarman was ruling over the Nasik region as a semi-independent feudatory of Vikramaditya's son and successor Vinayaditya I (681-96 A.D.) who is, however, not mentioned in the record. We know that Dharaáraya Jayasimhavarman is sometimes described as one 'whose prosperity was
1 Ind. Ant., Vol. XVII, p. 215. That the era started from the 5th September 248 A.D. is believed to be the later view of the same scholar (CII, Vol. IV, p. vii).
CII, Vol. IV, pp. 127 ff.
Above, Vol. XXXII, p. 176; of. Vol. X, p. 15. Mirashi's view that Anivärita was the name of Jayasimha's guru (CII, Vol. IV, p. 124) is unconvincing.
(117)
