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JULY, 1896.]
SOME SOVEREIGNS OF TRAVANCORE.
187
If chronology was not in his line, he could have at least utilized the words he so lavishly wastes, to recite the glories of his sovereign, Adityavarman, in the fashion of the Chola inscriptions, affording thereby some scope for further historical investigations. Bat the most unpardonable of his offences, from our point of view, is his omission to insert somewhere in his five álókas the title Sarvanganatha of bis sovereign. For then we could have been certain that 'Sarvânganatha' of the previous record and Adityavarman of the present are but names of one and the same king of Véad. In the face, however, of the substantial agreement between the two documents, there can be little question as to the truth of the identification. No doubt. the more imaginative of the two instruments substitutes in place of the "fair lamp-house' the inner shrine of Kộishņa itself, which, however, could not have been constructed along with the mandapa in which it is inscribed, since we know that it was in existence as early as 363 M. E. The word navatva used in this inscription signifies usually only renewal,' and may be so taken to apply to that inner shrine, which probably was touched up and repaired when the adjacent new works, the mandapa, and the rectangular enclosure, with the railings for lamp posts, were completed. I have no hesitation, therefore, in inferring that in 550 Vênad was governed by Adityavarman surnamed Sarvanganatha. In view of this extremely probable conclusioa, Mr. Shungoonny Menon's statements would seem to require modification. Either Sri-Vira-Rama-Mártândavarman did not live till 550, or Ravivarman was not his immediate successor. Mr. Shangoonny Menon indeed (p. 93) mentions an Adityavarman with whom in truth his chronology begins: but he is indefinitely said to have reigned in the fifth century M. E., to have adopted two females from Kolathnad on the other side of Calicat, and to have extended his sovereignty to Vycome in 505, statements that do not look at first sight probable in themselves, particularly by the side of our inscription of 491. At any rate, they require further examination and verification. Meantime we may conclude with the help of the records now before us that in 550 the throne of Vêņâd was occupied neither by ViraRama-Mårtåndavarman nor by Savivarman, but by Adityavarman, the Sarvaiganatha.
XVII. Our next inscription comes from a different quarter. It is engraved on four sides of a tablet posted in front of a temple, now said to be sacred to Âlvår, about three miles to the south of Padmanabhapuram in South Travancore. It consists of two parts-a Sanskrit áljka and a prose record in Tamil. The part in verse may be thus translated :
17 Old Tamil Grantha No. 72 Sanskrit
* First Padmanabhapuram Inscription of Vira
Kerala-Mártandavarman. E “In the Saka year Sakhaloka, when the sun was in his own house, the chief of the gods in Sagittarius, and the moon in the constellation Yâmya, the prosperous roler, Martandavarman, of boundless fame and mild disposition, the chief among the kings of Kerala, instituted, granting lands of great value for the purpose, regular offerings at daybreak for the god Sambhu of the temple of Sivagiri.”
This rather cleverly composed couplet is certainly more satisfactory than those of the temple of Krishna. The chronogram Sakhaloka according to the Katapayadi system of notation means the year 1925, and the Saka era being specially mentioned, there can be no doubt that the date recorded corresponds to the Malabar year 578 (A. D. 1402). The sun being said to be in his own house, current astrology would lead us to infer that the month was Chingam or Simha, the sign Leo being the one now believed by astrologers to be peculiarly the sun's own constellation. But as we shall see presently, the Tamil portion of the inscription specifies the month as Mêsham. This must be due either to an alteration in astrological conventions since 578 M. E., or to an error on the part of the composer of the Sanskrit distich, who mistook the heavenly position where the sun is reckoned to be at the zenith of his glory for the sign specially considered to be his own - 8 pardonable error, no doubt, on the part of one
