Indian Palaeography c15.s9.t3.4

Language: English

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The term ‘South India’ has been used here to denote the area south of the Kistna Valley. It is not a homogeneous region. Sufficient materials are not available from its different parts to give a coherent picture of the styles of writing in use between the fourth and eighth centuries A.D. The main inscriptions are those of the Pallavas, which give neither a continuous genealogy nor a connected development of the palaeography. Various historical factors are responsible for this chaotic development in the region. The coming of the Pallavas itself marks a definite change. It appears that they uprooted the Bṛihatphalāyanas in the Guntur region, as the Mayidavolu plates of Śivaskandavarman are in the same style as the Kondamudi plates of Jayavamma, and traces of this style are also seen in the subsequent record found at Hirahadagalli in the Bellary district. But the style of the first record, as I have already remarked in the case of the Kondamudi plates,¹ is a retrogression from the symmetrical writing of the Ikshvākus. The second record recalls the long verticals of the Ikshvāku writing but the hand is still corrupt. However, the connexion of the Pallavas with the Ikshvākus is established by the newly discovered inscription (discussed below) of the Pallava Siṁhavarman, which copies the degenerate style of the Ikshvāku writing. The next in the series, the British Museum plate, is in the same bad hand, but shows new types of medial vowels and also some new forms.

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Then there is a break. We have only a fragmentary record, the Darsi plate, to fill this gap. Here the writing has faint traces of thick head-marks and the letters are well formed. This tendency is very clear in the first Omgodu grant¹ of Vijaya Skandavarman, but the published lithograph of the plate is so bad that no certain details can be derived from it. Then we come to the inscriptions of Siṁhavarman. We can clearly distinguish three styles in them: (i) the writing seen in the Magdur and Pikira grants, which has thick head-marks and the lower verticals of which have long curves; (ii) the style seen in the Uruvupalli and Vilavati plates, which has hollow or solid square head-marks and shows a preference for angularity, especially noticeable in the lower curves of the verticals; and (iii) the altogether different script of the second Omgodu grant, which is in the proto-Kannadi writing of the seventh to eighth century a.d. The first two styles are easily derivable from the square-headed letters of the Madharas of Guntur region, which have been assigned to the late fourth and early fifth century a.d.² Later still we find two styles persisting in the Pallava records. (iii) is seen in the Chura (sometimes called Narasaraopet) plate of Vijaya Vishṇugopavarman and in the Udayandiram plates of Nandivarman.

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(ii) henceforward drops its square head-marks, but its other features are continued and further developed in the stone inscriptions of Kāñchī, Mamallapuram and Trichinopoly, and also in the copper plates of later Pallava kings. The proto-Kannadi script is an extraneous writing and its presence here is inexplicable. (ii) also leads on to the development of the Grantha and Tamil characters. This palaeographical analysis does not fit in with the genealogical tables built up by the historians who have tried to reconcile the long genealogies given in the later records of the Pallavas with the fragmentary information contained in the earlier plates. The main difficulty is raised by the plates in proto-Kannadi script. Krishnasastri was the first to suggest a solution. He believed that the Omgodu grant no. 2 ‘must have been a copy of a grant of the 5th–6th century a.d., put into writing in the 7th century’.³ D. C. Sircar followed in his footsteps and similarly asked: ‘What is the objection if we think that the Narasaraopet grant was also an early inscription likewise copied about the same time?'¹ If we follow this argument, we have to say the same thing about the Udayandiram plates of Nandivarman, but this question has somehow been missed by D. C. Sircar.² It must be pointed out that the theory of the official adoption of the proto-Kannaḍi style in this region in the early eighth century a.d.

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seems rather doubtful, especially when we know that this region had its own style of writing well perfected by this time. One cannot escape the suspicion that the plates are the forgeries of persons unacquainted with the official script of the region. The same remark applies to the Chendlur plates,³ though this last record tries to copy the local style in a very bad hand. If this suspicion is true, the genealogy given in these plates need not be accepted. However, it is not my purpose to try to build up any genealogical table. I shall only describe the palaeography in the chronological groups as analysed above.