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SEPTEMBER, 1926)
A NOTE ON BHASKARA-RAVIVARMAN'S DATE
177
A NOTE ON BHASKARA-RAVIVARMAN'S DATE.
By A. S. RAMANATHA AYYAR, B.A., M.R.A.S. On pages 220-3 of volume LIII, ante, Mr. K. N. Daniel had been at great pains to prove that there were two Chêra kings of the name of Bhaskara-Ravivarman, that on account of certain palæographical and linguistic reasons they should be considered to have lived almost within the same century, and that "it is unquestionably proved on astronomical grounds" that these two kings, Bhaskara-Ravi I. and Bhaskara-Ravi II., should have respectively reigned in the first and second half of the sixth century A.D.
Messrs. V. Venkayya, T. A. Gopinatha Rao and K. V. Subrahmanya Ayyar, however, attributed the Vatteluttu script of Bhaskara-Ravivarman's records to the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D.; and Diwan Bahadur Mr. L. D. Swamikkannu Pillai, M.A., LL.B., I.S.O., of Madras, who had worked at the astronomical details furnished in a few of this king's records on this assumption, had arrived at the tentative date of A.D. 978 for his accession. He was also the first scholar to propound the theory that there may have been two kings of that name (T.A.S., II, pp. 45-6); because, in his opinion, the positions of Jupiter given in some of the records were found to be irregular and could not agree uniformly with this initial date of the king. Mr. K. N. Daniel has attempted to reconcile the apparent discrepancies of these details, by assuming that "the years are sometimes age, and sometimes regnal years, and sometimes current, and sometimes expired."
However this may be, I propose to examine them in detail elsewhere. I have discovered 1 a record of king Bhaskara-Ravivarman, which fixes his date beyond the possibility of any doubt to be the end of the tenth century A.D. This inscription is found engraved on the narrow upper surface of the lowermost upána of the stone base of the Adbhutanarayana temple at Tirukkadittânam (Travancore), which contains many other records of the same Chêra king. The stones composing the basement having become slightly disturbed in position on account of age, the top portions of the letters in the first line of this epigraph are hidden by the next superposed thin champa stone-member supporting the kumuda-moulding, so that the writing could be deciphered only by tracing the visible lower portions of the letters. Although I had realised the importance of this record for Chêra chronology more than a year ago, I could not make it public, as I could then produce only an eye-copy in support of my statements and could not substantiate them by an authoritative facsimile. I have now managed after some trouble to get fairly satisfactory estampage prepared; and this piece of indisputable epigraphical evidence is surely entitled to much greater consideration than the debatable arguments based merely on astronomical, palæographical, or linguistic data.
This record is dated in the year (here one stone is much defaced) opposite to the 2nd year of the reign of king Bhåskara-Ravivarman, and mentions that while Govarddhana (this portion is mutilated) Mârttândavarman was governing Nanrulai-nadu, Srivallabhankôdaivarman, the ruler of Vèn&du (Vēņådudaiya), made a gift of lands for the conduct of the Uttiravila-festival, beginning from the day of Kärttigai in the month of Kumbha. This record is incomplete, but with the details of the festival we are not much concerned. The important sychronism that the inscription furnishes is that Vêņådudaiya Srivallabhai kôdai was a feudatory of the Chêra king Bhaskara-Ravivarman.
Fortunately for us, we know this Vêņadu ruler from his Mâmballi copper-plate (T.A.S., IV. pp. 1-11) and his two Tiruvanvandúr stone inscriptions (T.A.S., II, pp. 22-5); of these three, the copper-plate is dated in Kollam 149 and the astronomical details give the English equivalent-A.D. 973, November 10. As we do not know how long this Vēņadu ruler reigned and in what part of his reign Kolam 149 fell, we can only premise that Bhaskara-Ravi. varman, his suzerain of the Tirukkaļittånam record, must have been reigning in the last quarter of the tenth century A.D.; and as Mr. L. D. Swamikkannu Pillai has, by calculating the details furnished in the Tirunelli plates (T.A.S., II, pp. 30-1) of the latter, independently
1 The inscription was examined in April 1925.
