Current Version: draft, 2025-01-14Z
Editor: Dániel Balogh.
DHARMA Identifier: INSVengiCalukya00081
Hand Description:
Halantas.
Original punctuation marks.
Other palaeographic observations.
No metadata were provided in the table for this inscription
⎘ plate 1v 1svasti[.] śrīmatāṁ saka[[la-bhuvana-saṁstūyamāna-mānavya-sagotrāṇāṁ hāritī-pu]]
2trāṇāṁ kauśikī-vara-pra[[sāda-labdha-rājyānāṁ svāmi-mahāsena-pādānudhyātānāṁ mā]]
3tr̥-gaṇa-paripā[[litānāṁ bhagavan-nārāyaṇa-prasāda-samāsādita-vara-varāha-lāñcha]]
4nekṣaṇa-kṣa[[ṇa-vaśikr̥tāśeṣa-]][[mahībhr̥tām]] [[Aśvamedhāvabhr̥tha-snāna-pavitrīkr̥ta-gā]]
5trāṇāṁ cālukyānāṁ [[kulam alaṁkariṣṇoḥ]] [?18+]
6svāsi-dhārā-namit¿i?⟨a⟩[[-ripu-nr̥pati-makuṭa-taṭa-ghaṭitāneka-maṇi-kiraṇa-rāga-rañjita-cara]]
⎘ plate 2r 7[nāra]vinda-yu⟨ga⟩la¿ḥ?⟨sya⟩ Aneka-samara-saṁghaṭṭ(ano)palabdha-vijayina⟨ḥ⟩ śrī-maṁgi-dugarāja-
8sya putraḥ pravardhamāna-pratāpopanata-samasta-sā(ma)nta-maṁḍala(ḥ) sva-śakt¿ī?⟨i⟩-{s}traya-
9-śūlāvabhinna-para-narapati-sakala-bala-cetana⟨ḥ⟩ sva-vaṁśodaya-śrī-(gi)ri-śikharāva-
10bhāsi-mahodayatvā(n) meṟur iva sthitimān ravir iva tejasvī para¿p?⟨m⟩a-brahma-
11ṇyo mātā-pit¿u?⟨r̥⟩-pād¿a?⟨ā⟩nu{r}ddhyāt¿ā?⟨a⟩⟨ḥ⟩ pr̥thur iva pra¿dhī?⟨thi⟩ta-yaśāḥ śrī-viṣṇuvardhana-mahā-
12rāja¿sya?⟨ḥ⟩ Ittham ājñāpa(ya)ti
pasiṇḍipa(ṟu)-v¡a!stavyasya ¡taitrīya!⟨taittirīya⟩-saha-brahma-
⎘ plate 2v 13cāriṇe bhāradvāja-gotrasya trivedasya Āpastaṁ¿bh?⟨b⟩a-sūtrasya devaśarmmaṇ¿e?⟨aḥ⟩ pauttrā-
14(ya) veda-vedāṁ¿dā?⟨ga⟩-vid¿e?⟨o⟩ droṇamaṇḍasya putrāya{ḥ} govindaśarmmaṇe Aneka-ka¡ḷ!⟨l⟩ā-śāstra-jñā-
15(ya) candra-grahaṇa-nimitte toya-pūrvvaṁ kr̥tvā prāṅgguṇāḷa-viṣaye bo-
16ṇḍāḍa nāma grām¿a?⟨e⟩ kuṭuṁ¿y?⟨b⟩i(naḥ) samājñāpayati gr̥ha-s¿t?⟨th⟩āna⟨ṁ⟩ toṭa-vāṭa-sahitaṁ
17dattaṁ[.] Ā¿ś?⟨g⟩neya-digbhāge vrīhi-vīja-triṁśa(t)-khaṇḍika⟨ṁ⟩ c¿ā?⟨a⟩ kṣetraṁ nūṟu 100 maṟuntru ¿kṣe-
18trebhyantaraṁ? dattavāN
Asya kṣetrasya sīm¿a?⟨ā⟩-vibhāgaḥ[.] pūrvvataḥ kāḷasīya-vāṭa-
19bhoya-kṣe(tra)-sīm¿aḥ?⟨ā⟩[.] dakṣiṇataḥ tuṁkhtalapaṟu-bhoya-kṣetra-sīm¿aḥ?⟨ā⟩[.] paści¿ṇ?⟨m⟩ata(ḥ) ¿ga k⟦ā⟧⟨⟨u⟩⟩lyā?[.]
⎘ plate 3r 20Uttarataḥ kāmadeva-kṣetraḥ kṣetra{ṁ}(m i)ti[.] Asya dharmmasy¿a?⟨ā⟩harttā paripāla¿I?⟨yi⟩tā Ā-
21gāmi-kāla-rāja¡riṣi!⟨rṣi⟩⟨r⟩ mayā śirasā prati¿b?⟨p⟩ūjita Iti⟨.⟩ vyāsa-¿ś?⟨g⟩īt¿a?⟨au⟩ dvau ślokau
Ā¿g?⟨j⟩ñaptir asya prāguṇāla-viṣaya-¿rāṣṭrakuṭubi kakaṇḍiveḷḷi mu(ṭḷu)?
25(svasti)
3 [[litānāṁ ]] ... [[-lāñcha]] • The text I supply here is five characters longer than that needed to restore the
first two lines, while the extant bit of text at the beginning of the line is only
2 or 3 characters shorter. Perhaps vara was omitted from the standard text in the original.
4 [[ṇa-vaśikr̥tāśeṣa-]] ... [[-kr̥ta-gā]] • Here too, the text is slightly long. The restoration is probably very close to
the original, except for the word mahībhr̥tām, which may have been a different word meaning king or enemy.
6 [[-ripu-]] ... [[-cara]] • The restoration is probably very close, but the original may have been slightly
shorter, e.g. through lacking the word taṭa or rāga.
7 [nāra]vinda-yu⟨ga⟩la¿ḥ?⟨sya⟩ • PS prints the two supplied segments in the same editorial markup. I assume that
ga has been omitted, while nāra has been worn to illegibility. PS does not supply the lost text on 1v, so he must
have had some reason to supply just these two syllables at the beginning of this line.
Further, PS does not emend -yugalaḥ to -yugalasya. The text is syntactically acceptable without this emendation, but given the structure
of the section, I am quite certain that a genitive was intended here. — 7 saṁghaṭṭ(ano)palabdha ◇ saṁghaṭṭo(ṇo)palabdha PS • PS’s reading, printed with ṇo in square brackets, should in principle mean that ṇo is unclear, but he may have wished to indicate something else. I believe the composer’s
intent was saṁghaṭṭanopalabdha, but this may require emendation if PS is correct in printing ṭṭoṇo. — 7 -vijayina⟨ḥ⟩ • The text is slightly garbled here; it ought to be -vijayinaḥ without preceding upalabdha, or -vijayasya with it. Both occur in similar expressions in related plates.
8–9 -{s}traya/-śūlāvabhinna- • Although the text is intelligible this way, I am quite certain that scribal haplography
is involved, and the composer’s intent had been -traya-triśūlāvabhinna-. Compare e.g. the very similar phrases in the Guḍivāḍa plates (set 2) of Jayasiṁha I.
10 meṟur • Lacking the means to verify, I accept PS’s reading meṟur, but I doubt the ṟ here.
12 pasiṇḍipa(ṟu)- • PS prints ṟu in round parentheses, which by his notation should mean that he is emending the preceding
pa to ṟu. I assume that he intended to indicate an unclear character.
14 -vid¿e?⟨o⟩ • PS does not make this emendation, and it is not essential for the text to be intelligible,
but here too, I feel certain on the basis of the passage’s structure that this was
the composer’s intent. — 14 Aneka-ka¡ḷ!⟨l⟩ā-śāstra- • PS prints aneka kaḷā sāstragñāya, noting after aneka that ‘Asterisk sign on the right side of the top of the letter ka and a damaged letter ma below the line are noticeable. Hence it may be read as aneka kalā’. I do not understand why he observes the scribal mark and the added letter if he
then disregards them. I wonder if the text has been corrected from dharma-śāstra to kalā-śāstra or the other way round. — 14 prāṅgguṇāḷa • Given that the spelling is reported as prāguṇāla in line 24, I have some doubt about the correctness of ṅggu here. — 14–15 -jñā/(ya) ◇ -gñā/(ya) PS • I believe that this is a typo in PS’s edition, but cannot be certain; compare samājñāpayati in line 16 and Āgñaptir in line 24.
16 samājñāpayati • PS’s edition prints samāñāpayati with an indiscernible manual addition before ñ. Since the diacritical marks in his edition have also been added by hand, I believe
this is a correction by PS and the plates have the expected samājñāpayati; however, compare the notes to lines 14 and 24.
17 ¿kṣe/trebhyantaraṁ? • I cannot interpret this reading. PS’s commentary speaks about ābhyantara-kṣetra at one point and abhyantara-kṣetra at another. If that is correct, then the reading may be printed incorrectly. If the
reading is correct, then perhaps it should be interpreted as kṣetre ’bhyantaraṁ with abhyantara as a substantive (a kind of revenue?). See also the note to the translation.
19 tuṁkhtalapaṟu- • PS’s reading of this name seems doubtful to me. — 19 ¿ga k⟦ā⟧⟨⟨u⟩⟩lyā? • PS observes that the ā seems to have been erased and a very faint u has been added at the bottom. He opines that ga is superfluous, and thus obtains the word kulyā, which he says means a canal. Sircar’s IEG refers this meaning of kulyā to a single publication in EI, which is a copper plate from the far north, deemed
spurious by its editor, who announces without any explanation or evidence that kulyā means an irrigation canal. I believe both PS’s reading and his interpretation may
be incorrect.
20 -kṣetraḥ kṣetra{ṁ}(m i)ti • PS does not comment on the repetition. The intent may have been simply kṣetram iti, though kṣetra-sīmā is also plausible.
24 Ā¿g?⟨j⟩ñaptir • Here, the reading and emendation are both present in PS’s edition, so the received
reading is apparently correctly reported. Compare the related words in lines 14 and
16. — 24 ¿rāṣṭrakuṭubi kakaṇḍiveḷḷi mu(ṭḷu)? • I show the received reading as printed in PS’s edition. PS emends kuṭubi to kuṭuṁbi in the body text, but then notes that ‘The medial i on ti and the letter bi seem to have been erased’, so I believe the plates may in fact read kuṭibi. PS then proposes reading rāṣṭrakūṭaka kaṇḍivelli muṭlu, understanding the latter two words as a name. Without seeing the plates, I cannot
offer an opinion on reading rāṣṭrakūṭa, but believe that whether or not that word has been corrected by the scribe, the
name (or whatever it is) should better be read kakaṇḍiveḷḷi muṭḷu.
1-12Greetings. [The grandson of His Majesty King Viṣṇuvardhana II],↓1 [who was eager to adorn the lineage of the] majestic Chaḷukyas—[who are of the Mānavya gotra which is praised by the] enti[re world, who are s]ons [of Hāritī, who attained kingship by the grace of] Kauśikī’s boon, [who were deliberately appointed (to kingship) by Lord Mahāsena, who are pro]tected by the band of Mo[thers, to whom all kings instantaneously submit at the mere] sight [of the Boar emblem they have acquired by the grace of the divine Nārāyaṇa] and whose limbs have been hallowed through washing in the purificatory ablutions (avabhr̥tha) of the Aśvamedha sacrifice—[...] the son of His Majesty Maṅgi Dugarāja, whose pair of lo[tus feet were tinted by the hues of the rays from the many gems fitted to the surfaces of the crowns of all the enemy kings] bowed down by the blade of his own sword, who attained victory in the clash of many a battle: His Majesty the supremely pious King Viṣṇuvardhana (III), who was deliberately appointed (as heir) by his mother and father, whose ever-increasing valour forces the entire circle of subordinate rulers (sāmanta) to bow, who breaks the entire army and [even] the mind of enemy kings with the trident comprised of his own three powers (śakti-traya), who—because of his magnanimity illuminating the summit of the majestic Sunrise Mountain that is his own dynasty—is as sound as (Mount) Meru and as fierce as the sun,↓2 who has widespread glory like Pr̥thu, commands as follows.
12-18Informs the householders.↓3 To the grandson of Devaśarman—a resident of Pasiṇḍipaṟu belonging to the Taittirīya school and the Bhāradvāja gotra, [learned in] three Vedas and the Āpastamba sūtra—and son of Droṇamaṇḍa learned in the Vedas and Vedāṅgas, [namely] Govindaśarman, who is familiar with numerous disciplines (kalā) and treatises (śāstra), on the occasion of an eclipse of the moon [I have] given, accompanied by (a libation of) water, a homestead plot along with a ¿herb and flower? garden↓4 at the village named Boṇḍāḍa in Prāṅgguṇāḷa↓5 district (viṣaya). [I] have also given [to him] a field (sufficient for the sowing) of thirty khaṇḍikas of paddy seed in the southeastern direction, ¿the revenue of that field being? a hundred, [i.e.] 100, maṟuntru.↓6
18-21The disposition of the borders of this field [is as follows]. To the east, the border of the bhoya field [of the village] Kāḷasīya-vāṭa. To the south, the border of the bhoya field [of the village] Tuṁkhtalapaṟu. To the west, ¿a canal?.↓7 To the north, the field [called] the field of Kāmadeva. I worship with [bowed] head that sagacious king of a future age who does not confiscate this ruling (dharma) [but] protects it. [There are these] two ślokas sung by Vyāsa:
24-25The executor (ājñapti) of this [provision] is ¿Kakaṇḍiveḷḷi Muṭlu, a householder of the province (rāṣṭra) that is the district (viṣaya) of Prāguṇāla?.↓8 Blessings.
Not reported in ARIE. Edited from the original by P. V. Parabrahma Sastry (1994), without facsimiles, with a summary of the contents. The present edition by Dániel Balogh follows Parabrahma Sastry’s edition unless otherwise noted in the apparatus, except for the silent correction of what I deem to be typos and transliteration inconsistencies in PS’s edition. The restorations supplied on 1v are also mine. PS mentions that the charter contains many scribal corrections, but explicitly indicates only a very few in his edition.
↑1. According to PS, ‘It is known from the broken piece that no earlier king is mentioned’ than Maṅgi. But I would expect the current king’s father and grandfather to be named,
and Viṣṇuvardhana II could very well have been mentioned in line 5.
↑2. The eulogy is probably a little garbled here: Viṣṇuvardhana’s illumination of the
mountain of his dynasty should be adjacent to his comparison to the sun. Compare also
ll. 14-15 of the Pithapuram plates (set 1) of Jayasiṁha I.
↑3. This phrase was probably erroneously added to line 16, where it breaks the sentence
completely after the name of the village and the district. In many related grants,
the king addresses the householders and overseers of a particular village and its
district, so the words were probably inserted here under the influence of that practice.
↑4. According to PS’s discussion, the donation includes ‘garden and vāta’ or, elsewhere, ‘gardens and residential locality (vāta)’”. My assumption, which may be wrong, is that the Telugu word toṭa and the Sanskrit word vāṭa refer to two related but different things, the first probably being a herb or vegetable
garden, and the second a flower garden. Flower gardens (puṣpa-vāṭikā) are mentioned in association with a homestead plot in the Jaḷayūru grant of Viṣṇuvardhana III, the London Plates of Maṅgi Yuvarājaand the Elūru Grant of Maṅgi Yuvarāja, but toṭa is, as far as I am aware, unique in the corpus.
↑5. The spelling of the name here and at the end of the charter is strange. It is certainly
the same district that is called variously called Pāgunavara and Prakuṇora.
↑6. I do not understand this part; see the apparatus to line 17 for the textual problem
involved. I assume that abhyantara means some kind of revenue (cf. Sircar’s IEG, s.v. abhyantarasiddhi) to which the donee is entitled from this field. PS suggests that the term abhyantara-kṣetra means wet land, but does not justify this in any way. In his summary, he calls this
a field “of hundred maṟuntrus” once and “hundred maṟturs” another time, apparently separate from the paddy field. It is not clear whether
the word maṟuntru is so straightforward to him that he does not deign to explain it, or if he is as
ignorant of the meaning as I am. At any rate, I definitely do not think the text is
about two fields.
↑7. The reading and interpretation are problematic here; see the apparatus to line 19.
↑8. The name may be Kaṇḍiveḷḷi Muṭlu, and he may be a territorial overseer (rāṣṭrakūṭa) of Prāguṇāla district. See the apparatus to line 24.