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OCTOBER, 1890.)
SATARA GRANT OF VISHNUVARDHANA I.
305
to denote him in the grant of his son Jayasimha I. (ante, Vol. XIII. p. 138); and it appears on the seals of the grants of his grandson, Vishnuvardhana II. (see the Plates, ante, Vol. VII. p. 191, and Vol. VIII. p. 320). The seal of the present grant also exhibits his name, taken as simply Vishna, in the Prakrit form of Bittarasa, i. e. king Bitti or Bitta.'
From the mention here of Pulikesin II. as "the glorious Mahárája," it is not to be inferred that his position was anything below that of a paramount sovereign, - in, of course, his own dominions. Setting other things aside, Hiuen Tsiang's account alone (Beal's Buddhist Records, p. 256 f., and Life, p. 146 f.) is amply sufficient to shew what his real rank and power were. And the fact simply is, that the development of the technical titles of paramount sovereignty in Southern India was later than in the more northern parts of the country. It will be useful to take this opportunity of sketching the history of them in the south; so far, at any rate, as the Chalukyas are concerned.
We have to take first the case of the Early and Western Chalukyas. In Northern India, the primitive title of Maharaja had, two centuries at least before the time with which we are dealing, been superseded by that of Mahárájádhiraja, with Paramabhattáraka attached to it (see Gupta Inscriptions, p. 10, note 3, p. 15, note 4, p. 17, notes 1, 3, and p. 25, line 1). In Southern India, on the contrary, it had been retained in its original paramount application ;' and no change in respect of it was made, so far as our present knowledge goes, till in the generation after Pulikesin II. The earliest Chalakya grant that uses any formal title at all, is the Goa grant of Saka-Samvat 532, which refers to "the Maharaja, the favourite of fortune and of the earth" (Jour. Bo. Br. R. As. Soc. Vol. X. p. 365; see also page 12 above, note 7). The next is, either the undated Nerûr grant of Palikesin II., which connects the title of Maharaja with his name (ante, Vol. VIII. p. 44); or his Haidarâbâd grant of Saka-Samvat 534 expired, which attaches the same title to both his own name and those of his father and grandfather, Kirtivarman I. and Palikesin I. (ante, Vol. VI. p. 73). And this latter grant shews also the first step that was made towards a more dignified nomenclature, by mentioning also his other name or title of Paramosvara. As to the origin of this title, the grant in question says that he acquired it "by defeating hostile kings who had applied themselves to the contest of a hundred battles;" while the later inscriptions state, more specifically, that he acquired it “ by defeating the glorious Harshavardhana, the warlike lord of all the region of the north" (e. g. ante, Vol. VI. p. 78). It is noteworthy that Harshavardhana himself did not use the title in his grants
* Another form of the name was Bittiga (e. g. Jour. Bo. Br. R. As. Soc. Vol. XI. p. 244).
3 As regards the analysis of the term maharajadhiraja, it is a question, open to discussion, whether we should take it as maharaja + adhirdja, lit. 'supreme king of great kinge,' or as maha + rajadhiraja, lit. 'great supreme king of kings. I have hitherto treated it, as if the former is the case, but I am not quite sure that I have been right in doing so. The doubt does not occur to me now for the first time.
+ It is probably to be interpreted in this way wherever it occurs in the Early Kadamba grants (ante, Vol. VI. pp. 22-32; Vol. VII. pp. 33-38); in the Pallava grants (e. g. Vol. V. pp. 50, 154; Vol. IX. p. 100); in the Eastern Ganga grants (Vol. XIII. pp. 119-124; Vol. XVI. p. 131); and in similar early grants from Southern India, e. g. the Salankayana grant (Vol. V. p. 175), the grant of Nandaprabhañjanavarman (Vol. XIII. p. 48), and the grant of Prithivi. mula (Jour. Bo. Br. R. 48. Soc. Vol. XVI. p. 114). - On the other hand, as applied to the Sêndraka Pogilli in the Balagámve inscription (page 145 above), it is unmistakably a feudatory title. - The use of the expression dharmaMaharajadhiraja in the 'Hirahadagalli' grant (Epigraphia Indica, p. 9) may help in determining the exact period of that grant. But, while not inclined to agree with Mr. Foulkes in placing it so early as in the second century A. D. (Jour. R. As. Soc. Vol. XXI. p. 1118), -[the afvamedha-sacrifice of this grant, is, in my opinion, to be placed in a period subsequent to the revival of that rite by Samudragupta), -I must not be understood as meaning that it belongs to a period later than that in which the title Maharajadhiraja was adopted by the Chalukyas. It is very possible that, through their contact with Samudragupta, the Pallavas of Kanchi came to learn the existence of the title, and brought it into occasional use, long before the time when it penetrated to the western parts of Southern India.
5 From the use of this title, with that of Rajadhiraja, in the Adur inscription (ante, Vol. XI. p. 70), it seems probable now that that record must be referred to the time of Kirtivarman II., - not of his ancestor of the same Dame.
