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Avqust, 1927)
THE DATE OF BIASKARA RAVIVARMAX
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THE DATE OF BHASKARA RAVIVARMAN.
By K, G. SANKAR, B.A., B.L. KERALA is the part of South India inhabited by people who speak Malayalam (an offshoot of Tamil). It is now split up into the Indian States of Travancore and Cochin, and the British district of Malabar. But in ancient times it was undivided and owned the sway of a single dynasty of emperors. Bhaskara Ravivarman was one of such emperors. His in. scriptions and copper-plates have been found in all parts of the Kerala country. They reveal to us the fact that Malayalam was already developing into a distinct language, with its own grammar and diction. Bhaskara Ravivarman was moreover the earliest emperor in India to give special privileges to the Jews, which he did in his 38th year, as we know from his Cochin plates published in the Epigraphia Indica (vol. 3, No. 11). His date is therefore of pecnliar importance for the history of the Malayalam language and also of the Jews in India.
But unfortunately scholars are not yet in agreement as to his date. The vast majority of them place it in the eleventh century A.D. But recently (Indian Antiquary, vol. 53, pp. 220223) Mr. K. N. Daniel has attempted, relying mainly on astronomical evidence, to take him back to the sixth century A.D. If his conclusion be accepted, we shall have to revise the current notion that Malayalam branched off from Tamil as a distinct language only in the ninth century A.D. This notion is based on a comparison of the Tiruvalla plates (eighth century A.D.) of Rajasekhara, published in the Travancore Archocological Series (vol. 2, No. 1), which are entirely free from Malayalam forms, with the Kottayam plates of Sthâņu Ravi (circa 900 A.D.). Mr. Daniel's arguments therefore deserve careful scrutiny.
He has recently adınitted that arguments based on linguistic and palæographic evidence are taken by themselves, inconclusive, and he therefore mainly relies on the astronomical evidence. I shall therefore confine myself here to examining his astronomical argument. But, before doing so, it would be well to consider whether there is no other definite historical evidence that may throw some light on the date of Bhaskara Ravivarman.
Mr. A. S. Ramanatha Ayyar has recently pointed out in the Indian Antiquary and elsewhere that the Tirukkadittanam inscription of Bhaskara Ravivarman (Trav. Arch. Ser., vol. 5, No. 61) refers to a festival instituted by Sri Vallabhan Kodai of Venâd (i.e., Sout Travancore). But he concludes that Sri Vallabhan was a feudatory of Bhaskara Ravi. varman. This, however, is by no means certain. The inscription does not say that the festival was instituted in Bhaskara Ravivarman's time. We can therefore only infer that Śri Vallabhan lived at or before the date of the inscription, and that Bhaskara Ravivarman was not earlier in date than Sri Vallabhan. Now the Mâmpalli plates of Sri Vallabhan Kodai of Venad date themselves definitely, through their astronomical data, on the 10th November 973 A.D. (Trav. Arch. Ser., vol. 4, No. 1), and as we know of only one Sri Vallabhan Kodai of Venad, it is almost certain that Bhaskara Ravivarman did not live before the end of the tenth cen. tury A.D. Mr. T. K. Joseph, on the other hand, told me that he was able to read the word padu (i.e., of old) in the original inscription, in connection with the festival instituted by Sri Vallabhan Kodai. But, as his statement is not supported by the plate published by Mr. Ramanatha Ayyar, and as he himself has not yet thought fit to publish his reading of the inscription, we cannot for the present rely on his statement. We can therefore only conclude that Bhaskara Ravivarman lived in or after the latter half of the tenth century A.D.
To this conclusion Mr. Daniel opposes his astronomical argument. He says that the astronomical data given in the Perunna inscription (Trav. Arch. Ser., vol. 2, p. 34) and the Tirunelli plates (ibid., vol. 2, . 31) of Bhaskara Ravivarman agree only with dates in the sixth century A.D., in a period of 5000 years starting from the Kali era. If this statement were correct, we should have to assume the existence of an earlier Sri Vallabhan Kodal of Venad, however unwilling we might be to postulate so early a date for Bhaskara Ravivarman. Messrs. Ramanatha Ayyar and Joseph, no doubt, fight shy of the astronomical
