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No. 31-HONNEHALLI INSCRIPTION OF ARAŞAPPA-NAYAKA II, SAKA 1478
(1 Plate) M. 8. BHAT, OOTACAMUND
(Received on 23.11.1959) This inscription is engraved on a slab built into the south wall of the Narasimha temple in the Svarnavalli matha at Honneball in the Sirsi Taluk of the North Kanara District in Mysore State: This is the epigraph which was probably referred to by Buchanan. It is edited here with the permission of the Government Epigraphist for India.
The inscription consists of nine lines of writing. The preservation is satisfactory except the last line, the first few letters of which are partly built in and partly rubbed off. The writing covers a space about 3' 61 broad by 81' high.
The characters are early Malayalam mixed with Grantha, although two akaharas at the beginning are written in Nāgari. The original idea of the scribe was probably to write in Nagari, which was, however, later given up. The epigraph is interesting from the palaeographical point of view as it illustrates the development of the early Malayalam script from Grantha. The form of medial å stands midway between Grantha and Malayalam. The letters k, t, n and y resemble their modern Malayāļam forms. The letter d shows a curve in the place of the central danda of the Grantha form of the letter, thus becoming the precursor of its modern Malayalam from. The shape of the letters r and s is not uniform throughout. This is perhaps due more to the carelessness of the engraver than to the transitional nature of the script.
The language is Sanskrit and the record is written in six stanzas in Anushţubh. The orthography does not call for any remarks excepting that the consonants following r are doubled and that the conjunots mb and mbh are represented by nb and nbh respectively. This latter peculiarity may be due to the influence of Malayalam pronunciation.
The inscription begins with the symbol for siddham followed by the well-known stanza Namastungao, etc. This is followed in verse 2 by & reference to the Narasimha incarnation of Vishnu worshipped in the temple, in which the inscription has been found. Verges 3-4 form the subject matter of the record. It contains the date, viz., Śalivåha Saka 1478, expressed by the chronogram dāsarandya-mite (according to the Kata payādi gystem) in line 5 of the text. The oyólio year Rakshasa, which is also referred to in the same line together with Paramāyana, is given in the margin along with the year of the Saka era, the year being written in Telugu-Kannada numerical figures. But the said cyclic year corresponds to the Saka year 1478 only if the latter is taken to. be current. No other details of the date are given. But, if Paramāyana (i.e., Uttarāyaṇa) indicates the Uttarāyana-sankrānti, the day would correspond to the 29th December 1555.
The epigraph next states that Arasapa ruling over Somadăpuri built the shrine for a god apparently Narasimha.. Then the well-known verse El-aiva bhagini, etc., is quoted and it is followed by a stanza which appears to record some provision made in favour of the temple for lamps, and food offerings to the god and the feeding of ascetics. The other details of the grant are lost.
1 A. R. Ep., 1939-40, B. K. No. 16. * Travels in Southern India, Vol. III, p. 216. . Cf. Bom. Gaz., Vol. XV, Part II, p. 846.
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