Indian Antiquary Vol 14

Author(s): John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 59

FEBRUARY, 1885.)
SANSKRIT AND OLD-KANARESE INSCRIPTIONS.
49
Vol. I. p. 73 ff., where the plates are entered acquired by themselves, and on & tradition as coming from the village of Korumelli in of the later Kadambas that the founder of the Rajamahêndri District; this is the village their family was named Trilôchana or Trinethe grant of which is recorded in the inscrip- tra :-“ After that,-sixty emperors, less by tion. They are five in number, each about 94" one, commencing with him, in unbroken lineal long, by 55" broad. The edges of them are succession, having sat on the throne of raised into high rims, to protect the writing; Ayodhyâ (1. 19-a king of his lineage, and the inscription is in a state of perfect pre- Vijay aditya (1. 19) by name, went to the servation almost throughout. The ring, on region of the south, from a desire for conquest, which the plates are strung, is about 1" thick and, having attacked Trilochana-Pallava, lost and 5" in diameter; it had been cut before his life through the evil influence of fate. In the grant came under my notice. The seal on that time of disorder, his queen-consort, who the ring is circular, about 3" in diameter; it was pregnant, came with the family-priest, has, in relief on a countersunk surface,-across and with a few of the women of (her) bed. the centre, the legend Sri-Tribhuvanásik usa; chamber, and with (her) chamberlains, to the above the legend, a boar, recumbent to the agrahára named Mudivemu; and, being cheproper left, with the sun and moon, two chauris, rished just like a daughter by the Sómaydjin a double drum, a Sankha-shell, and, close to the Vishộubhatta who dwelt there, she brought moon, something that may perhaps be the forth & son, Vishņuvardhana (1. 23). head of a spear (kunta); and below the legend, And having caused to be performed the rites a floral device, an elephant-goad, a closed lotus of that prince, such as were befitting his on its stalk or perhaps a sceptre (kanaka-danda), descent from the two-sided gôtra of the and something like the letter ga, which may kindred of Manavya and the song of Håriti, perhaps be meant for a makara-torana.' The she reared him. And he, being instructed in characters are Old Kanarese, of the period to history by his mother, went forth, and, which the grant belongs. The language is having worshippod Nanda, the holy Gauri, on Sanskrit throughout, except in one or two the Chalukya mountain, and having appeased Kanarese genitive cases in the passage describ- Kumira and Narayana and the Mothers (of ing the boundaries of the village that was mankind); and having assumed the emblems granted.
of universal sovereignty which had descended The first plate is a palimpsest. On the outer to him by the succession of his family, and side of it there are traces, distinctly visi- which had been, as it were, (voluntarily) laid ble, of twelve entire lines of writing, in a aside, vis. the white umbrella, and the single somewhat older and squarer form of the same sankha-shell, and the pañchamahásabda, and the alphabet ; but the letters are 80 carefully palikatana, and the pratidhakld, and the sign beaten in, that no passages can be read with of the Boar, and the feathers of a peacock's any certainty. The first plate has also a raised tail, and the spear, and the signs of the rim on its outer as well as its inner side. It is rivers) Ganga and Yamuna, and other (such plain, therefore, that it was an inner plate of emblems), and having conquered the Kadambas some older grant, utilised again for the present and the Gangas and other kings,-he ruled inscription.
over the region of the south, lying between the The inscription commences with a Puranic Bridge (of Rama) and the (river) Narmada, and genealogy, from Nårå yana or Vishņu down to containing seven and a half crores (of villages.) Udayana (line 18). Then comes the following The son of that same king Vishņuvardhana, passage, which however, is nothing but a mere and of his queen-consort who was born in the farrago of vague tradition and Puranic myths, of lineage of the Pallavas, was Vijayaditya no authority, based on the nndoubted facts (1. 30.) Ks son was Polakesi vallabha that the Chalukyas did come originally from (1.31.) His son was Kirttivarman (1. 31.) the north, and did find the Pallavas in posses- His son,- Hail! Kubja-Vishnuvardhana sion of some of the territories afterwards (1.36)—the (younger) brother of Satyasraya.
. . Soo the fronimile in the plate, ante Vol. VII. p. 953.