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MAY, 1908.]
NOTES ON INDIAN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.
213
NOTES ON INDIAN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.
BY J. F. FLEET, I.C.S. (Red.), PH.D., C.L.E. The date of the Mahakata pillar inscription of the Western Chalukya
king Mangalewa. This record has been edited by me in Vol. XIX. above, p. 7 ff., with a facsimile lithograph. I have had occasion to refer to the date of it in Ep. Ind. Vol. VII., in connection with the date of the Nidagundi inscription of the time of Amôghavarsha I. And my remarks made there about it have to be supplemented by a statement which proved too lengthy to be given in that place.
The date of it is contained in lines 14, 15 of the text. It runs, as given in my published version :- Uttaróttara-pravarddhamâna-rajya-pañchama-sri-varshe pravarttamâne Siddharthê Vaisakha-pûr namâsyam. And the translation is :-" In the fifth glorious year of (his) constantly augmenting reign, in the year) Siddhartha being current, on the full-moon day of the month) Vaisakha."
My reading of the text of the date has been criticised by Dr. Bhandarkar, in the following manner. He has said :-" I have carefully examined the facsimile of the inscription given " in the article; and am satisfied that this is by no means the correct reading. Rajya and parar"ttamané are the only words that are certain and perhaps the word ért also. But pañchama is "highly doubtful; the letter which Dr. Fleet reads ma is exactly like that which he reads ncha; and “there is some vacant space after ficha and ma in which something like another letter appears. Simi"larly the si of siddharthé is hardly visible as an independent letter, and the next two letters are "also doubtful. Besides in no other inscription of the early Chalukyas does the cyclic year appear."!
But there is no sound foundation of any kind for so taking exception to my reading of the date. I have, indeed, before me now, while I am writing this note, other and much better ink-impressions of the original record, from which I hope to give, some day, a much finer reproduction of it. The wording of the whole passage, however, is quite clear and unmistakable in the already published lithograph, which is a facsimile of the ink-impressions then available. It would be difficult to point to many, if any, ancient dates on stone, more easily capable of being read without any uncertainty. And the text of this date is, syllable by syllable, exactly as I gave it in my published version, at a time when it did not at all fall in with my previous notions about the exact period of Mangalêba, and as I have now given it again above. In my introductory remarks to the record, I said (loc. cit. p. 8): "The inscription itself consists of sixteen lines; and the first line is the "lowest. Line 1 runs round the pillar on the same level ; the other lines wind upward, with, in some "instances, considerable irregularity in the directions along which they run; and, partly to show the “way in which the end of one line runs into the beginning of the next, and partly because in a few "instances an akshara lies, not entirely on either the first or the last face of the stone, but on the "dividing edge between them, the lithograph has been so arranged as to repeat an akshara or two " at the beginning and end of each line." If Dr. Bhandarkar had paid attention to that statement before he carefully examined" the facsimile, and bad then examined the facsimile with a view to test my reading, and not simply to dispute it so as to suit certain preconceived and quite erroneous ideas of his own, he could hardly have failed to see that the akshara, standing in the first place on the left before the beginning of line 15,- in respect of which he has said that I read it as ma, but that it is "exactly like" that which I read as ficha, - is actually the ficha itself, which stands last but one at the end of line 14, on the right, and has been reproduced in the lithograph on the left, before the beginning of line 15, in the circumstances stated by me, and that the supposed vacant space, after this supposed ma (really ficha) and before the ári, is occupied by the real ma itselt, which stands last at the end of line 14, on the right, and, witb the ncha, similarly stands again in the lithograph on the left, at the beginning of line 15. For the rest, nothing could be plainer than, not only the si,
1 Early History of the Dekkan, in the Gax. Bo. Pres. Vol. I. Part II. p. 182, note 3.
