________________
102
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
1. 6, and III. a, 1. 4, there is no Anusvára or guttural nasal, and it reads 'Kogani.' Undoubtedly, either the Anusvára, or the guttural nasal, is required before the g, and, when it does not occur, it is omitted through carelessness. Accordingly, I have entered it as a correction in 1. 5 of my transcription. As to the vowel of the second syllable, a or u, it is possibly liable to variation, as is the case in so many Dravidian words; and in one instance, referred to more particularly below, it occurs as i
Down to the end of the description of Harivar mâ, the present inscription follows very closely the wording of the copper-plates, except that the first king is not mentioned in the plates by his name of 'Madhava. And there can be no doubt that the first three kings are the same persons who stand first in the genealogy of the plates. Mâ rasimha, the younger brother of Harivarm â, is not mentioned in the plates, the direct succession being continued by the son of Harivarmâ:
Now, however, the ever-recurring question of discrepancy of dates crops up again; and in this instance the discrepancy is a very wide one indeed. The Mallôhalli plates are not dated in any era save that of the reigning king. But the Merkâra plates purport to record a grant of the time of the great-grandson of Harivarmâ, in the year 388, which is taken by Mr. R. G. Bhandarkar to be the Saka year 388. And the Nâgamangala plates purport to record a grant by the eleventh or twelfth in succession to Harivarma, in the Saka year 698. And, in his paper On the Inscriptions of Southern India, of which an abstract is given at p. 38 of the Report of the Second International Congress of Orientalists, Prof. Eggeling refers to a copperplate grant, in the Elliot facsimile collection, of Arivarmâ,-the Harivarma of the Merkâra, Nagamangala, and Mallôhalli plates, and of the present inscription,-dated Saka 169. Whereas, we here find Harivarm â's younger brother making a grant in the Saka year 890 or 891. And the date, in 1. 24, is expressed in words, not in figures, and the words recording it are very distinctly legible in the tracing, though they are omitted in the MS. copy.
I am not prepared at present to suggest any explanation of this discrepancy. But, if the present inscription were a forgery, made in Saka 890 or 891, the forgers of it would certainly have
[APRIL, 1878.
given it a much earlier date, and would probably have endeavoured to imitate the more ancient characters. In my opinion, the date of the present inscription is more probable than the date of the Merkåra plates, if it is to be referred to the Saka era, and than the date of the Nagamangala plates, which is expressly said to be in the Saka era.
And we have to notice here three Ganga or Kong u stone-tablet inscriptions from the Kiggatnad forest, published by Mr. Kittel at Vol. VI., pp. 99 et seqq. They are inscriptions of Satyavà k ya-Kongunivarma, or 'Kongiņivarm â', as the name is spelt in one of them, No. I. The same name, Satya vakya', is given to the king who stands twenty-sixth in the list made out from the chronicle called Kongudésa-charitra and published at Vol. I., p. 361. And Marasimha dêva, again, is called Satyavâkya-Kong univarm â in 1. 23 of my present inscription. Now, satya-vákya, 'of truthful speech', is a title, rather than a proper name. And it does not necessarily follow that Mârasimha dê va is the same person as the Saty a vâ ky a of the Kiggatnâd inscriptions, or of the traditional, and possibly rather inaccurate, list of the Kongudesa-charitra. At the same time. I consider that he is to be identified with the Satya vaky a of one of the Kiggatnâd inscriptions. I have seen the photographs of the originals, from which facsimile plates have been prepared; and I consider that they are not to be allotted all to the reign of one and the same Satyavâkya-Kong univarma. One of them, Mr. Kittel's No. III., at p. 103, is entirely undated. In another, No. II., at p. 1026, the date runs :-Sa(sa)ka-nṛip-a (á) titá(tá)-kálasamvatsaramga!-entu-núr-ombattaney avarsham= pravartlisutt-ire, i.e. "while the eight hundred and ninth year, of the years of the era which had expired of the Sa ka kings, was current"; and it is further stated to be the eighteenth year of the reign of Satya våk ya. This Satya vaky a, therefore, commenced to reign in Saka 791; and it follows that he cannot be the Marasimhadêva-Satya vakyaKongunivarmâ of my present inscription now published. These two inscriptions, Mr. Kittel's Nos. II. and III., are to be grouped together, the characters of both of them being of the same square and upright type and of the same age. The date of the remaining Kiggat
