________________
APRIL, 1911.]
FIVE BANA INSCRIPTIONS AT GUDIMALLAM
Southern India, and from its sculpture, it may be set down at the latest to about the second or the third century A.D. The plate shows the front view of it.
Of the five inscriptions under notice, one was discovered by Mr. Venkayya and the four others by me. The stones on which are the four latter inscriptions, were lying scattered about the precincts of the Parasuram ávara temple. One of the slabs, that bearing on it the inscription B., was broken into six pieces: they were found after much search, and were put together, and the inscription was thus recovered.
105
The inscriptions are in general in an excellent state of preservation; but the stone bearing A. is broken lengthwise, and the first few letters of each of the lines are lost; but it is easy to supply them from the context. Also, the slab on which E. is engraved is broken on the right side, on account of which the last few letters of the first eight lines and the first letters of a portion of the inscription on the back of it are lost; in this record, the subject-matter cannot be made oat, but the regnal year and the name of the king in whose reign the document is dated are easily read.
As regards orthography, the records present very few peculiarities to which attention might be drawn. What little is worth noting, is given in the introductory remarks to each record.
These inscriptions are of great importance in fixing the exact periods of the Baus kings, to whose reigns they belong. The records A. and B. are dated Saka 820 and 827 respectively, and refer themselves to the reign of Vijayaditya, a son, according to A., of Bana-Vidyadhara, and his wife Maraka [nim]madigal. Another Vijayaditya-Mahavali-Vanarayar is mentioned in E. as the contemporary of Visaiya-Dantivikramavarmar, in the 49th year of whose reign the record is dated.
In C., mention is made of Vana-Vidyadhara, the Bapa, who ruled under Nṛipatungs, and the record is dated the 24th year of the reign of the latter. The inscription D. belongs to the 23rd year of the reign of Nandippottaraáar, whose contemporary was Vikramaditya-MahavaliVäṇarayar.
From the Udayandiram grant of the Bāņa king Vikramaditya II, we obtain the following genealogy of the Bāņa kings:
1. Jayanandivarman
(He ruled the western portion of the Vadagavali country.)
I
2. Vijayaditya I
8. Malladeva or Jagadekamalla
1
4. Banavidyadhara
5. Prabhamēru
6. Vikramaditya I
7. Vijayaditya II,
8. Vijayabahu-Vikramaditya II, a friend of Krishnaraja II of the Rashtrakuta dynasty.
3 Compare this image with the picture of the Yaksha given on p. 36 of Grünwedel's Buddhist Art in India an translated by Gibbson and Burgess. The face, the ear and the ear-ornaments, the arms and the ornaments on them, the necklace and its design, the arrangement of drapery, particularly the big folds that descend between the legs, all these are identically the same in both the image of Siva reproduced here and the Yaksha already mentioned.
alias Pugalvippavargaṇḍa
Four of these are now set up in front of the entrance of the temple and that on which our inscription B. is engraved, is left in the safe custody of the village officer.
Ep. Ind., Vol. III, p. 76.
