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134
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1876.
to assign to his reign. Thus much being premised in support of the figures as contained in these grants, we must resort to the Merkara plates, which belong to the same period, in order to fix the year of the era. They were dated in Saliva hana Saka 388, which corresponds with the year Parâbhava. To arrive at Jaya we must go back 12 years, and thus obtain the date 6. S. 376 for the first grant, or A.D. 454, and by consequente Ś. S. 347, or A.D. 425, for the birth and commencement of the reign of Konga ni II. and the termination of that of Madhava II., his father. The cal- culation for the second grant is now easy, and we get the dates-S. $. 435, or A.D. 513, for the grant itself, and $. . 400 or A.D. 478 for the end of the reign of Kongaại II. and the be- ginning of that of A vinita or Kongani Vriddha. There is only one objection which, it occurs to me, might be urged against this computation. It is the advanced age to which Avinita must, according to these figures, have arrived when he made the second of our present grants. For this is 57 years later than the Merkara grant, which was also made by him, but at a time when, apparently, he was his father's minister, and must therefore have already arrived at manhood. But say he was then 20, he would now be 67, an age quite within the botinds of reason. And that he could not have been much over 20 at the former period is evident from this, that his father was only 41. Having thus, as I trust conclusively, established the dates in question, and by proving their credibility vindicated that of the remaining contents of the inscriptions, we mayow proceed to examine these more closely.
To begin with the oldest. The first thing to be remarked is the carions differences in the string of descriptive phrases attached to each king, differences which might be set down as errors on the part of the composer or transcriber, but that this being the oldest of the grants the expressions may here be in their original form, afterwards altered and improved upon. I
The three others agree, for instance, in || From the Nagamangala plates we learn that Prithvi Kongani reigned at least 50 years; while, if the Kongudela Rajakal is to be relied on, Kongani I. reigned 51 years.
T Observe also the ghana gagana of the first line, in place of the gata ghana gagana of the other inscriptions.
* Mr. Taylor's version of the Kongte-defa Raja kal says, "This king, in going out to conquer hostile kinge, was
ascribing to Kongaại I. the feat of dividing with one stroke of his sword a mahd silá stambha, or great pillar of stone, but here this figures as anila or nila star.ibha. What either of them means it is difficult to say. The silá stambha might have been a linga, like the historical one of Somanath which was broken by Mahmûd of Ghazni, or it might have been a pillar of victory erected by some rival prince * ; but the new version, meaning either wind-post or blue sapphire) post, seems inexplicable, as it is hardly possible that the reference can be, by a wildly bold metap, or, to a conquest of the Nila-giri. The ornament of a wound, again, with which Kong ani I. is decorated in the other grants, is here bestowed upon the next king, Madhava I. ; while instead Kongani is described as a wild-fire in consuming (ba... ti, a word I cannot make out,-it may be a proper narae). Further on, we find none of the religious devotion attributed here to Vishnu Gopa, which in the other three appears as his principal attribute. On the contrary, he is credited with uncommon mental energy, unimpaired to the close of life. All +'re grants agree in stating that Madhava I. was very active in promoting works of merit, but here this is expressed without the figure employed in the formerly published grants, and in terms which seem to imply something like a Brahmaņical revival. Our second grant states this in even stronger language, and expressly adds that it was fostered by Konga ni II. and Avinita. Lastly Kongaại II, is simply styled the son of Madhava, without any allusion to his mother's being a Kadamba princess, as mentioned in the three other grants.
The second of our present inscriptions contains a much fuller account of most of the kings than is given in either of the others. But especially with reference to Kongani II. and A vinita. The former, we thus learn, as already stated, was crowned at his birth. He appears to have made many conquests and to have reigned with great glory. Brahmaņical
accustomed to cut a stone asunder with his sword, and then to vow that this was a pattern of what he would do to the king's enemies" (Mad. Jour. XIV. 7) a statement which does not appear to throw much light on the subjest.
Sir Erskine Perry states that the pillars erected by Asoka were called by him sfla stambha; virtue-pillars, because he had engraved upon them his laws and exhortations to good conduct: Jour. Bo. Br. R. As. Soc. vol. vi. p. 168.
