Current Version: draft, 2024-05-22Z
Editor: Jens Christian Thomas.
DHARMA Identifier: INSTelugu00083
Hand Description:
Alternative identifier:
Origin:
Classification: commemorative-memorial-hero memorial
Languages: Telugu
Corresponding Artefact: ARTTelugu000076 inscription on On a slab set up in a grove called Polimēratōpu near Cinna-Tippasamudram
Layout: 6 lines are observed/preserved on the artifact.
1svasti śrī gaṇḍamaykali-
2yya maganṟu [?1*] cuḻpa(ti)
3maganṟu goccicōpatiya
4kayambuna poḍicci viṟu-
5ga[mba]di paḍi Intralō-
6kaṁb ēge
3 goccicōpatiya ◇ goccicopatiya
4–5 viṟu/ga[mba]ḍi ◇ viṟu/ga[?2*](hi)
Hail! The son of cuḻpati, (who is) the son of Sri Gaṇḍamaykaliyya (Gandamalikavya?) fought in the battle of Goccicopatia ...fell and went to the world of Indra.
Svasti! (X)cuḻpati, the hero (maganṟu), the son (maganṟu) of Śrī Gaṇḍamaykali, got in close combat in the battle of Goccicōpati, was defeated, fell and went to Indra’s world.
The text mostly follows the edition of J. Ramayya Pantulu in 1948: page 337, № 621 in absence of a picture. Changes have been made due to grammatical or lexical necessity or probability. The dots used in the edition to indicate lost or unintelligible characters can not clearly be attributed to a certain quantity of characters (one dot may indicate one or more lost or unintelligible characters). I regard the ending -yya and -ya to be a Kannaḍa (or Kannaḍa-like) genitive suffix as is the regular form of a word ending in -i. In several Old Telugu inscriptions not only phonological resemblence of Kannaḍa and Tamiḻ forms (like anlauting s- instead of c-) can be found but also Kannaḍa morphology (or rather what appears as such) is sometimes met with. Since this suffix is absent in (X)cuḻpati, I regard this to be the hero’s name that otherwise would strangely enough not have been mentioned in the inscription. Radha Krishna (1971: page 298) interprets -iyya as comming from -ayya but that only holds good for the proper noun but is not to be expected on the place name. On the other hand both forms could be instances of the so-called emphatic particle that probably had the shape -a in Old Telugu (Sastri 1969: page 260). The term maganṟu is attested with several meanings amongst which is ’son’ in Old Telugu (as is probably in the first instance of this inscription, while some of the other meanings would fit as well), ’husband’, ’man’, ’hero’ (see e. g. Sītārāmācāryulu 1922: page 597 under the head word magan̆ḍu). Etymologically, the term consists of the element maga- “male” (as attested in certain compounds) and the masculine ending -nṟu, wherefore the meanings mentioned above probably result from an original ’the male/masculine one’. The name of the place where the battle took place probably has to be read goccicōpati because kocci appears as a place name elsewhere (Nilakanta Sastri and Venkataramayya 1947–1948: pages 229–230, № 42 D) and cō is later attested in the meaning ’place’. In line 5 Ramayya Pantulu’s reading ‹hi›, while perhaps being the closest to the actual representation on the stone, has to be emended into the very similar ‹pi› since 1) only few words can end in -hi and 2) we get the well-fitting converb viṟugambaḍi ’being defeated’.
The inscription was noted in A. R. No. 374 of 1904 and first published by J. Ramayya Pantulu in 1948: page 337, № 621 with few metadata and without translation. K. M. Sastry 1969: page 336 provides a translation while relying on J. Ramayya Pantulu’s edition.