Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions c8.s2.1

c8.s2.1

Next to our Edicts of Aśōka, whose discovery formed—as has been said by the eminent French authority—an epoch in Indian archæology, the oldest inscriptions that have been found in Mysore are those in Prākrit on a pillar at Malavalli in Shikarpur tāluq. The first of these (Sk 263) is a grant by Hāritiputta-Sātakanni, of the Mānavya-gotra and Vinhukaḍḍa-chuṭu family, king of Vaijayanti, that is Banavāsi, engraved in what are called Cave characters. He commands the *mahā-valabham rajjukam*² that the village Sahalāṭavi has been given for the enjoyment of the Maṭṭapaṭṭi (that is Malavalli) god, as a Brāhman endowment, to Koṇḍamāna, a Hāritīputta of the Koḍinya-gōtra. It is dated in the second fortnight of the hot season, the first day of the first year. In Banavāsi is also an inscription (*IA*. xiv. 333) of apparently the same king, dated in the twelfth regnal year, in the seventh fortnight of the winter, the first day. In this the Mahārāja’s daughter, the Mahābhōji Sivakhada-Nāgasiri (Sivaskanda-Nāgaśrī) makes the grant of a *nāga* (the cobra in the middle of the slab on the margin of which the inscription is engraved), a tank, and a *vihāra*. Moreover, in the Tālgunda pillar inscription (Sk 176) Sātakarṇṇi is named as one of the great kings who had worshipped at the temple there. Again, to the west of Chitaldroog, on the site of an ancient city whose name is said to have been Chandrāvali, were found¹ in 1888 a number of leaden coins, among which were some bearing the legend “Sadakana-Kaḷalāya-Mahārathisa,”—that is, Sātakarṇṇi-Kaḷalāya-Mahārathi—surrounding a humped bull, and having on the reverse the Buddhist symbols of a *bōdhi* tree and a *chaitya*.