Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c8.s3.t1.1

c8.s3.t1.1

[64] The archaic variety of this script is found: — (*a*) In the west, in the inscriptions of the Kadambas of Vaijayantī or Banavāsi (plate VII, cols. XII, XIII), and of the early Calukyas of Vātāpi or Bādāmi, *e.g.* of Kīrtivarman I. and Maṅgaleśa (plate VII, col. XIV), Pulakeśin II., and Vikramāditya I. (sometimes). (*b*) In the east, on the Sālaṅkāyana plates, and on those of the first two Calukyas of Veṅgī, Viṣṇuvardhana I. and Jayasiṁha I. (plate VII, col. XVII).³ The date of the Sālaṅkāyana plates, which used to be assigned to the 4th century,⁴ is uncertain.⁵ The Kadamba grants probably belong partly to the 5th and partly to the 6th centuries; for, Kākusthavarman, who issued the oldest known record, was the contemporary of one of the Imperial Guptas, probably of Samudragupta,⁶ and his descendants all ruled before the overthrow of the Kadamba kingdom by Kīrtivarman I., between A. D. 566-67 and 596-97. The archaic Calukya inscriptions fall between A. D. 578 and about 660.⁷