The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s13.259

c8.s13.259

¹ The passage in question, in an inscription at Saundatti in the Belgaum District (*Jour. Bo. Br. R. Âs. Soc.* Vol. X. p. 194), is concerned primarily with a person named Pṛithvîrâma. In lines 8 to 15, the record mentions this person as a religious student and a servant at a king named Kṛishṇarâjadêva, and says that in the Manmatha *saṃvatsara*, *Śaka-Saṃvat* 797 expired (A. D. 875-76), a Jain temple was built at Saundatti, and was endowed, by a person who, as far as this passage goes, might be either Pṛithvîrâma or Kṛishṇarâjadêva. And in lines 15 to 18 it mentions Pṛithvîrâma as a *Mahâsâmanta*, feudatory to Kṛishṇarâjadêva, and explains that it was Pṛithvîrâma who, as chieftain, built and endowed the temple.—In connection with Pṛithvîrâma, the date seems to be not authentic. For, we have for his grandson Śântivarman a date (*ibid.* pp. 210, 211) falling in December, A. D. 980, of the Vikrama *saṃvatsara*, *Śaka-Saṃvat* 902 (expired); and the interval of a hundred and five years seems too great,—considering that the founder and endower of a temple could hardly be a young child.—Now, the record, at least as it stands, is not a synchronous one. The mention of a chieftain named Kanna in the first four lines, proves that all the earlier part of it, including the statements and date in question, was put on the stone at any rate not much before A. D. 1050; and the whole of it may have been put together as late as A. D. 1096, which date is given by lines 39, 40. And, on reconsideration of this record, my opinion is (1) that it makes a confusion between Kṛishṇa II. and his descendant Kṛishṇa III.; (2) that the real patron and sovereign of Pṛithvîrâma,—and the Kṛishṇa from whom, in other records, the Raṭṭas claim to be actually descended,—must be Kṛishṇa III.; whose earlier known date, A. D. 940, is in quite sufficient agreement with the period of a person (Pṛithvîrâma) whose grandson (Śântivarman) was a grown-up person, ruling as chieftain, in A. D. 980; and (3) that, in the first mention of Kṛishṇa III. and Pṛithvîrâma, there has been erroneously connected with them a date, taken probably from some archive of the sect to which Pṛithvîrâma belonged, appertaining in reality to Kṛishṇa II., for whom, as *Yuvarâja*, it is quite admissible.