Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c5.s2.t2.16

c5.s2.t2.16

A still further development in the direction of the Grantha forms is to be found in the inscription on a monolith at Seven Pagodas, now used as a Gaṇeça temple; and also again in a still more developed form at Šāluvaṅkuppam. There can be no doubt that these inscriptions must be put at about 700 A. D. The first four lines of the Gaṇeça temple inscription describe Çiva in a way that was only possible after Çaṅkara's development of the Vedānta; and as the rest states that a Pallava king built "this abode of Çambhu", the inscription cannot be later than the eighth century; for the Coḷas about then conquered Tŏṇḍaināḍu³), and rendered such an inscription in praise of a king of the old dynasty, impossible⁴). Again, decidedly archaic forms of letters occur; *e. g.* the secondary form of ā which is occasionally turned up instead of down, and which early disappeared in the Cālukya and Cera characters. That again this inscription is later than those on the so-called *rathas*, follows from the words “atyantakāmapallaveçvara çrīhā (!?) raṇajayaḥ” being written in this character over a nondescript figure on one of them. Were all these explanatory labels over the figures of one date or of about the same date, such a difference in the writing would not have occurred. There is another circumstance which corroborates the date I have assigned to this inscription—the existence of a Nāgarī transcript of some verses selected from it with additions at Šāluvaṅkuppam. The Nāgarī is precisely that of the eighth or ninth century, and it is accompanied by a transcript in old Grantha very near to that of the eleventh century as given in Pl. xiii.