Indian Antiquary Vol 51

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 219

XOVEMBER, 1922)
THE VELVI-KUDI PLATES AND THE SANGHAM AGE
211
The rulers of Ma'abar from Madura carried on a precarious and sanguinary struggle with the surrounding Hindus, cut off from the Dakhan by the power of Vijayanagar; but the Southern Dakhan its olf fell first under the rule of the Bah manis of Kulbarga, and then under the Five Shâhî Dynastics of Borâr, Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Bidar and Golkonda. There was always a quarrel betwe in these States and their Hindu neighbours further South.
The story, briefly told, reads like one horrible tale of war, rapine, murder and atrocious cruelty. This is, however, a misleading view, and I will repeat here what I have had occasion to say of another part of India during the same centuries : "Though, on the whole, the years of the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries make up a period of perpetual war with indiscriminate merciless fighting, it does not follow that individual towns and villages saw a great deal of it. What happened from the personal point of view of the ordinary citizen who lived under it was much this. He and his were left along to do largely as they pleased socially, with recurring intervals, not necessarily close together, of sheer nightmare, times of overwhelming horror, which they regarded much in the light of the epidemics and famines to which they were also always liable. As each bad period passed by, life recovered its ordinary routine more or less completely. Sometimes, of course, there was no recovery, and what was left of the villages and towns departed miserably elsewhere, but this was by no means commonly the case." In the South, as elsewhere, Hindu and Muhammadan have had to find a modus vivendi in respect of each other. How the admixture originally came about, Professor Krishnaswami's researches admirably illustrate, and show the way to a more complete investigation. THE VELVI-KUDI PLATES AND THE SANGHAM AGE.
BY K. G. SANKARA. IN 1893 Mr. Venkayya intended to publish these plates (1.A., XXII, 64 ), but produced only a summary in 1908 (A.R.E., Madras, 1908, pp. 62--9). As this is in places misleading, I here give a full and correct account, from a photo-copy that I got for study.
The ten plates have 155 lines, Ul. 1-30 and 142-150 being in Sanskrit verses, and II. 30141 and 151-155 in Tamil prose and verse, and not, as Mr. Venkayya says, in ornate prose with frequent alliteration. The Sanskrit words are in Grantha, and the Tamil ones in Vatteluttu script, older than that of the Madras Museum plates of the same king's seventeenth year,
The plates invoke Siva (u. 1, 2), and then mention the Pandyavamsa with its priest Agastya, who stopped the growing Vindhya and drank up the ocean (I. 3-5). Pândya, the sole survivor of the close of the Kalpa, was born as Budha to protect the world (U.5-7). This refers to the Påndya claim to lunar origin. His son was Purgravâs, who destroyed the daityas (1. 8).
Of his family came Mâravarman, who ruled long, performed tula-bhara (weighing against gold), and am ta-garbha (passing through & golden cow), and favoured learned men (U. 12-15). His son was famed (pratitah) as firm in battle (rana-dhira) (l. 16). His son was named (abhidhah) Mâravarman, the lord of Bhû-sundari. Sundarf indicates that this was the queen's name, and not the earth (U. 17-19). Rajasimha (lion of kings) forced Pallava-malla to retreat (II. 19-22), performed kanaka-garbha and tulábhara (1. 23), and married the daughter of the Malava king. The Mala vas-Mazhavas were a South Indian tribe defeated by Simhavishņu (S.I.I., II, 356) and Vinayaditya (1.A., VII, 303). From her was born the king named Jaţila (Tam. Sadaiyan) (U. 24—26). He is also called Parântaka, the son of Rajasimha, and was ruling when this prasasti was composed by Varodaya Bhatta (ll. 29-31).