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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1903.
the chellaketans or javelin-banner, who then, at some time between A. D. 878 and 878, was governing the Banavasi twelve-thousand province, and the districts known as the Belgali three-hundred, the Kundarage seventy, the Kundur five-hundred, and the Purigere three-hundred.
Other records supply further information about Banköya and the family to which he belonged. And the following notes may be usefully put together bere.
At Konnûr, in the Nawalgund talaka of the Dharwår district, there is an inscription on stone, edited by Professor Kielhorn in Ep. Ind. Vol. VI. p. 25 ff., which purports to reproduce the substance of a copper-plate charter. It was written about the middle of the twelfth century A. D. And, as has been pointed out by me in Vol. XXX. above, p. 210, it is not altogether a reliable record, because it makes certain misstatements and omissions in respect of the Rashtrakūtas. But, taking it for what it may be worth, we learn, in the first place, that, in a family, the name of which it gives as Mukula kula, there was a certain person named Erakori. His son was Adhóra or Adhora, lord of Kolantra, that is Konnur, whose wife was Vijayanka. And their son was Bankeba, otherwise called Sellaketans, whose name is presented as Bankeys and Banköyaraja in subsequent parts of the record.
In respect of this Bankoa, who is the Bankêya or Bahk@yarasa of the Nidagundi inscription and the Baika of a literary reference which will be noted further on, the Konnûr record makes the following statements. It assorts that, by the favour of Amôghavarsha I., he received and ruled “the thirty-thousand villages of which Vanavast is the foremost." It further indicates that Bankësa had been employed in some operations against the Western Gangas of Talakad, in reciting that, by the desire of Amoghavarsha I., he had "striven to extirpate that lofty forest of fig trees - Gangavadi, difficult to be cut down." And it claims that Bankesa at once ascended and easily took "that fort named Kedala, difficult to be scaled on account of its ramparts, bars, &c.," and that, having occupied that country, he drove away " the hostile lord of Talavanapura," that is, of Talakad. And further, in words, placed by the record in the month of Amôghavarsha I. himself, which deserve to be reproduced in full, from Professor Kielhorn's appreciative translation of them, it recites that “with a lion's spring having "crossed the Kaveri, most difficult to be passed on account of its heavy floods, .... he "shook the mighty dominion of him even who was able to shake the world. On that occasion, "when through internal dissension & disturbance had arisen near me, then, at the mere word " of me that he should retorn, - having made a vow that if, before his arrival, I, the Vallabha “lord, should defeat the enemies, he would as an ascetic completely resign the world, or if by "chance the fortune of victory should fall to the enemies, he would enter into the flames of a " roaring fire, - he arrived near me after a few days. Having said that also he certainly " would enter into fire if, within three months, by defeating the enemies he could not make “his master drink milk (to allay his anger or mental distress), - after my son, whose hosts " were consumed by the flames of the blazing fire of his impetuous bravery, blackened by the
* In line 58 of the record, the metre marks the vowel of the second syllable of this form of his name as the long e.
· Prof. Kielhorn has suggested (Ep. Ind, Vol. VI. p. 38) that this may be a place, shewn in the map in Mr. Rice's Mysore Inscription, as 'Khedapurs (Kaidala), which in the Indian Atlas sheet No. 60, N. E. (1995). is shown in
Kaidala,' three and a half miles south-south-west from Tumkur, the head-quarters of the Tumkor district in Mysore. The position is suitable enough. And from Mr. Rioe's Mysore, revised edition, Vol. II, p. 185, we leam that the village contains the rains of two fine temples, and "appears to have been formerly the capital of a state.” But we are told, in the same place, that the former name of it is said to have been Kridapura,' and that, though
das meaning "the restored hand" in connectiou with a legend about Jakkan charya, the name appears as KaydAl' in records of A. D. 1150. And there is nothing in the map to indicate that the village is, or has been, a fortified place. The identification is, thus, not certain.
47 Ep. Ind. Vol. VI. p. 38, verses 27 to 81, and 31.
" " According to the writers on medicine, milk is a remody not only for bodily disease, but also for mental "disorder."