The Rashtrakutas and their Times c8.s1.5

c8.s1.5

occurring in the Begumra plates of Kṛṣṇa II. The reading of the last part of the first line is ‘Kṣataprajābādhaḥ’ in the Talegaon plates of Kṛṣṇa I himself, and the Paithan plates of Govinda III, ‘Kṛtaprajāpālaḥ’ in the Daulatabad plates of S’aṅkaragaṇa, and ‘kṣitau prajāpālaḥ’ in the Alas plates of Kṛṣṇa’s son Govinda II. It is, therefore, clear that this line either praises Kṛṣṇa I for removing the miseries of the subjects or observes that Dantidurga was also a ruler of the same category; the correct reading of the last word of the first line in the Begumra plates is clearly, ‘akṛtaprajābādhe’ and not kṛtaprajābādhe. (36) A verse in the Baroda plates of Karka of the Gujrat branch no doubt says that Kṛṣṇa I had ousted a relative, who had gone astray, but the Bharata Itihasa Samshodhaka Mandala, (37) Talegaon (38) and Bhanduk (39) plates of Kṛṣṇa I himself make it abundantly clear that this relative could not have been Dantidurga. As Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar observes, (40) Kṛṣṇa I would not have tolerated a eulogy of his murdered nephew in his own grant, and added at the end that when the victim of his machinations had departed from this world, he ascended the throne. The relative ousted by Kṛṣṇa was very probably Karka II of the Antroli-Chharoli record who, we have seen, was a distant cousin of his. The Antroli-Chharoli record itself shows that Karka II was even then entertaining imperial ambition. Karka there styles himself ‘Samadhigatapanchamahāś’abda-parama-bhaṭṭāraka-mahārājādhirāja-parameś’vara : It will be seen that here Karka is trying to smuggle cleverly for himself the imperial title after first using the feudatory one to which alone he was entitled. After the death of Dantidurga he may have openly declared himself emperor. It is, therefore, very probable that the relative ousted by Kṛṣṇa was Karka II, he was certainly not Dantidurga.