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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9.s3: Government and Social Life

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c9.s3

Language
English

Contents

Government and Social Life

The King

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MONARCHY of the type prescribed in ancient books on Indian polity was the form of government which prevailed in the Cāḷukyan empire. The monarch not only reigned but actively ruled the kingdom, devoted personal attention to details, and spent most of his working time in the audience chamber or on the battlefield at the head of his forces. He toured his kingdom constantly and fixed his camp in different places so as to keep in touch with all parts of the realm. Succession to the throne was hereditary, and generally the eldest son succeeded the father. At the death of Kīrtti-varman I, his son Puḷakēśin II had not yet come of age, and his uncle Maṅgaḷēśa occupied the throne during the minority without let or hindrance; but when he sought to divert the line of succession and hand the kingdom down to his own son, Puḷakēśin had public opinion on his side and found it easy to gather support for the overthrow of the uncle who, having begun as guardian, had turned usurper. The confusion at the death of Puḷakēśin II was due to a major military disaster. The capital was lost to the enemy and the emperor had fallen in its defence; chaos followed for a time; the sons of the late monarch each sought his own security and proclaimed himself emperor in the area committed to his charge; one of them had a better vision; he realized the strength and durability of his father's life-work and had confidence in his ability to save the empire from dissolution; some hard fighting brought him final success and he became emperor after disposing of two, if not three, of his elder brothers. One of his younger brothers stood by him and had his reward. The occurrences before the accession and after the death of Puḷakēśin thus prove that hereditary right and ability to rule were the criteria which determined the order of succession.

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The Royal Titles

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At first the kings bore the titles *Satyāśraya Śrī-Prithivī-vallabha Mahārāja*; after the successful resistance put up against Harshavardhana by Puḷakēśin II, the title *Parameśvara* was added; under Vikramāditya I the higher titles of paramountcy *Mahārāja-dhirāja* and *Bhaṭṭāraka* come into use, so that the fully developed imperial style came to be—*Satyāśraya Śrī Prithivīvallabha Mahārājādhirāja Parameśvara Bhaṭṭāraka*. This full style was not always used and was often abridged by the omission of one or more of the titles contained in it. Sometimes the expressions *Paramabhāgavata* and *Paramamāheśvara* were introduced to indicate the devotion of the monarch to Viṣṇu or Śiva whenever it was felt necessary to do so.

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The Princes

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The education and training of the prince was carefully attended to. Pulakēśin I had a good knowledge of Manu, the Purāṇas, the Rāmāyaṇa, and the Mahābhārata, and was well versed in the art of politics.¹ Mangaleśa had a mind trained by the study of the śastras² and his proficiency in diplomacy forms the subject of a eulogium in the Mahākūṭa pillar inscription. Vikramāditya I trained his son and grandson by associating them actively in the administration during his own lifetime, and it is no surprise to find Vijayāditya credited in his inscriptions with having attained, early in life, to a mastery of all the śastras. Kirtti-varman II too had a similar training under his father Vikramāditya II.

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¹ Nerūr grant, *IA*, vii, 161.

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² Bādāmi inscription, *IA*, vi, 363.

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We hear little of any formal council of ministers; but there are many indications that the entire administration of the state was treated as more or less vested in commission in the whole royal family, and of the ruling sovereign's readiness to employ all capable and loyal members of that family in suitable administrative posts in the kingdom. This policy had the obvious advantage that the monarch gained welcome assistance in his onerous task, but it was not free from risks. The growth of the Eastern Chālukya kingdom and of Lāṭa into practically independent realms was a development approved, if not sanctioned, by the ruling emperors at the time—Pulakēśin II and Vikramāditya I. The risk of fission was seen at its worst in the interval between the death of Pulakēśin II and the accession of Vikramāditya I. But on the whole, in a state which was by no means highly centralized or unitary in its nature and which permitted the conquered rulers of several local dynasties to continue to rule their respective kingdoms as vassals of the emperor, the king's policy of placing his near relatives in dignified positions in different parts of the empire had its undoubted advantages.

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The Queens

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The queens and princesses had also, some of them at any rate, a part in the conduct of public affairs, and were devoted to learning, and to charity. Vijayabhaṭṭārikā, the queen of Chandrāditya, the elder brother of Vikramāditya I, issued two grants in her own name—a reminiscence of her former short-lived glory as the chief queen of a reigning king; she was a poetess who won high rank in the esteem of literary critics. Princess Kuṅkumadevī, the younger sister of Vijayāditya, was present with him in his camp at Kuḥuṇḍinagar in A.D. 705 and took the initiative in getting her brother to make the gift of a village to a learned Brāhman;³ a much later inscription (A.D. 1077) at Guḍigere states that she caused a Jaina *basadi* to be built in that city.¹ Vijayāditya’s mother Vinayavatī installed the images of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Maheśvara in the capital, Vātāpi.² An undated stone inscription of Vijayāditya from Kurtakoṭi mentions that Lokatinimmaḍi was administering Kuruttakuṇṭa;³ the name sounds feminine and one wonders if she was identical with Vijayāditya’s daughter-in-law, Lokamahādevī, the elder of the two Haihaya princesses, who became queens of Vikramāditya II and built one temple each at Paṭṭadakal in the neighbourhood of the great temple erected by Vijayāditya himself and called Vijayeśvara after him. The grant recorded in the Kendūr plates was made by Kīrtti-varman II at the request of his chief queen (*mahādevī*), who was evidently present in his camp at Raktapura.⁴

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³ *ARE* (1934-5), ii, 8.

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¹ *IA*, xviii, 37-9. ² *KI*, p. 3. ³ BK, 127 of 1926-7. ⁴ *EI*, ix, 205. ⁵ *IA*, x, 103. ⁶ Ibid., 170, cxii and cxiii. ⁷ Belagāmve inscription of Vijayāditya, *IA*, xix, 144-5; Aihole inscription of Vikramāditya II, *IA*, viii, 286, and Lakshmēśvar inscription of Yuvarāja Vikramāditya, *EI*, xiv, 188.

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The Courtesans

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We may note in passing one striking testimony which we get in contemporary records as to the role of hetaerae who have, by their charms and wiles, enslaved and disturbed the courts and cities of India in all ages. Vijayāditya’s beloved mistress Vināpōṭi and her gifts have been noticed already; though she is described with quaint candour as Vijayāditya’s beloved, the courtesan named Vināpōṭigal, yet the names of her mother and grandmother, Kucipōṭigal and Revamañchalgaḷ, are duly recorded in the inscription in true *śāstraic* fashion, and the names of all these three women bear the honorific plural at the end.⁵ Certainly Chālabbe, who endowed three pillars in the Vijayeśvara temple, and perhaps also Mātibhodamma, who contributed to make two other pillars of the temple, were other women of the same class.⁶

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Oral Orders

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We get only small peep-holes in the inscriptions into the system of administration, and what we see is not nearly enough to give a complete picture. The term *Rājaśrāvitam* occurs in some inscriptions.⁷ It is usually rendered as ‘royal proclamation’. It may mean that; but there is a suggestive vagueness about this term which conveys much more, and the term is therefore best left untranslated. It may mean reported to the king as much as proclaimed or ordered by him. The corresponding term in Tamil epigraphy *tiru-vāyk-kēḷvi* (lit. heard from the sacred mouth) shows that the term includes not merely set proclamations of a formal character, but orders issued to officers and others who acted as *vijñaptis* (petitioners) to the king and brought to his notice in a suitable manner matters requiring his personal attention. Such oral orders were taken down in writing by ‘secretaries’ attending on the monarch, and they put them into proper shape for further action such as communication to the concerned officers or parties, having them engraved on stone or copper plates and so on. The names of the persons who drafted the inscriptions, particularly copper-plate grants, are often mentioned at the end of the grants, and they sometimes bear the rank and title of *mahāsāndhivigrahika* (lit. the great maker of peace and war). Two names of such composers are preserved from the reign of Vikramāditya I—Vajravarman of the Vaidyānvaya¹ and *mahāsāndhi vigrahika* Jayasena.² And the names of four generations of the Puṇyavallabha family—note the name, itself an indication of the loyalty of the family to the Chālukyas—all *mahāsāndhi-vigrahikas*, are preserved in the records of the succeeding reigns, viz. Śrī-Rāma, Niravadya, Anivārita, and Dhanañjaya.³

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¹ Talamanchi plate. ² Karnūl, Honnūr, and Gadvāl plates. ³ EI, x, Pathak on Rayagad plates. ⁴ BK, 43 of 1932-3. ⁵ SII, ix (1), no. 46. ⁶ IA, xix, 309-10.

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Even some private inscriptions, it may be noticed by the way, contain names of composers of inscriptions, among whom the most celebrated was Ravikīrtti, the author of the Aihole inscription of the time of Pulakēśin II. The Yekkeri rock inscription of the same reign was written by an Īśāna, the Annigere inscription of the sixth year of Kīrtti-varman II by a certain Diśāpāla and so on.

Administrative divisions

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The number and size of the administrative divisions, and the agencies employed in the maintenance of order, the collection of taxes and the performance of judicial duties, were determined by historical causes, and there was apparently little attempt to impose a uniform system on all parts of the empire. The rulers of conquered dynasties were, in accordance with the precepts of the ancient books on Indian polity, allowed to carry on much as they had done before, subject only to the recognition of the suzerainty of the emperor; this meant only the payment of a periodical tribute, often disguised as a present, to the emperor, and following him with their own contingent of troops to the battlefield in war, and little other interference by the suzerain, so long as these terms were kept, with the details of the government of their realms. Such must have been the position of the Ālupas, Sindas, Sēndrakas, Bāṇas, Gangas, Telugu Chōḷas, and others. The terms *rāṣṭra*, *viṣaya*, and *nāḍu*⁴ occur in the inscriptions; but their sizes seem to have varied greatly, and a name like *Bāṇarāja-viṣaya*⁵ is proof that what were once independent states had become subordinate divisions of the Chālukyan empire. The relatively simple formulae in which the grants made by the Chālukyas of Bādāmi are announced on their copper plates confirm our view of the absence of any elaborate centralized system of imperial administration in this age. One of the fullest of these formulae, that of the Satāra grant of Viṣṇuvardhana,⁶ merely announces the grant to all *viṣayapatis*, *sāmantas*, *grāmabhogikas*, *mahattaras*, and others in the neighbourhood. *Viṣayapatis*, called *deśādhigārigal* in the Kannada language, were doubtless royal officers; their duties are nowhere defined and they were custodians of the interests of the king whose authority they represented and exercised in their respective offices. *Sāmantas* were the feudatories already noticed.

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The Village

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Everywhere the village (*grāma*) was the lowest unit of administration. The *gāmuṇḍa* (village officer) was the link between the villagers and the king's government, and he seems to have been an official appointed from the centre. He may have been identical with the *grāma-bhogika* mentioned above, but we cannot be sure of this. Two *gāmuṇḍas* are known from the inscriptions each to have built a *Jinālaya* (Jain temple), both of the reign of Kīrtti-varman II, one of them being Kaliyamma, the *gāmuṇḍa* of Jebulagēri,¹ the other mentioned in the Āḍūr stone inscription.² The *karaṇas* (village-accountants) are also mentioned in the Āḍūr inscription as having joined the *gāmuṇḍas* in preferring a request to *Mādhavatti-arasa*. The details of village administration and the regulation of its social and economic affairs were in the hands of the *Mahājanas* (village-elders), who are stated to have been governing Benniyur in the reign of Vijayāditya,³ and whose permission was obtained in another instance before a piece of land was given away to a temple—*mahājana-prajā-sammatade-koṭṭadu*,⁴ i.e. given away with the assent of the subjects who were *mahājanas*.

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¹ SII, xi (i), no. 5.

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² KI, no. 8.

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³ BK, 16 of 1933-4.

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⁴ SII, ix (i), no. 48.

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The Lakshmeśvar inscription of Yuvarāja Vikramāditya⁵ is valuable evidence regarding the relations between the king's government and rural institutions. By recording an *āchāra-vyavasthe* (charter of rights and duties) given by the Yuvarāja to the *mahājanas*, *nagara*, and the eighteen *prakṛitis* (classes?) of Porigere (the ancient name of Lakshmeśvara), this record shows that in the last resort local affairs were in fact susceptible to royal regulation. It mentions *rājapurushar* (royal officials) and lays on them the definite duty of protecting certain established rights. Besides the *mahājanas* it mentions the *nagara*, the industrial and commercial interests, and ‘the eighteen *prakṛitis*’ the nature of which is not clear. The body of the inscription prescribes rates of taxes (*tere*) to be given to the *deśādhipatis* every year in the month of Vaiśākha, and to the *Sēṇi* (guild) in the month of Kārttika. It also mentions the specialized guilds of braziers (*kañchagāra sēṇi*) and of oilmongers (*telliga-sēṇi*) and the payments of dues to them. We thus get a glimpse into the complex economic and political organization of life in a fair-sized city.

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⁵ Ep. Ind., xiv, 188. Not all is clear in this difficult record and the statements in the text are confined to what is absolutely certain in it.

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Taxation

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Some idea of the taxes raised may be gained from the descriptions of the exemptions accompanying grants of villages or assignments of the dues themselves for charitable purposes. Almost the only instance of a direct mention of the dues to be paid by citizens is in the Lakshmeśvar inscription of Yuvarāja Vikramāditya which seems to imply that persons who owned houses and house sites paid taxes on them, while families which had no house property paid according to their status 15, 10, 7, and 5 paṇas per annum to the king's officers; other payments are mentioned as due from all families either on occasions of public festivals (Barnett), or possibly at happy domestic functions. The Satāra grant of Viṣṇuvardhana Yuvarāja says that the village Ālandatirtham was, from the date of the charter, to be free from the visitations of chaṭas and bhaṭas (armed troops of sorts) as well as kusīdas (moneylenders), and from all imposts whatsoever (sarva-ādāna-viśuddha). General freedom from imposts is sometimes expressed by the phrases sarvopadhā parihāram (Talamanchi) or sarva-bādhā parihāram (Sorab). The Hyderabad grant of Pulakēśin II (A.D. 612) records that the village Mākarappi is given away together with its nidhi, upanidhi, klipta, and uparikara, terms which may be taken respectively to stand for treasure, deposit, settlement (of land revenue), and extra dues possibly of the nature of surcharges on land revenue or more simply taxes other than land revenue. The Nausārī plates of Śyāśraya Śilāditya (A.D. 671) mention the udranga and the parikara of a village as being included in the gift; the terms seem to imply market dues and tolls. Māruñcha, Ādityuñcha, Uñchamanna, and Marumanna are names of local dues attaching to land which are mentioned in the inscriptions from the Karnūl district and of which the nature is not at present clear. In the reign of Vinayāditya, Mahārāja Pogili of the Sendraka family was governing the two districts of Nāgara-khaṇḍa and Jejugur, each counted as seventy, and had under him an adhikāri by name Kandarba. This officer obtained a royal proclamation (rājaśrāvitam) remitting in both the territories the contributions due to the royal treasury under the heads—great festivals (pēriyā osage), salt, and property of the childless. The move to gain this concession seems to have been set on foot by the dāsas (devotees) of Valligāma (Belagamve, the place where the inscription is found), the temple establishments of Amali and Veḍevalli, Ravichandra, and three gāmuṇḍas (named) representing Alavaḷḷi, the people of Nāvaḷḷi, the gāmigas of Aṇḍugi, and Sindera gāmiga of Nirilli.¹

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¹ Fleet, IA, xix, 144-5; same as 8 of 1902 and EC, vii, Sk, 154; my interpretation of the record differs from that of Fleet in some ways.

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Besides these general taxes of a regular nature which made up the fisc, there were other impositions of an occasional character like the Tere-pon (tribute in gold) laid on every village of the Bāṇa-rāja-vishaya soon after its conquest by Pulakēśin II (Ereya),² and other dues payable in kind towards expenses on specified occasions, or to institutions. An inscription at Bādāmi belonging to the reign of Vijayāditya registers a gift of several taxes and incomes in kind like oil, sugar, and so on, to be paid, at prescribed rates for each shop, to the shrine of *trimūrtis* established by the queen-mother Vinayavati;¹ surely these contributions were used up in the daily offerings to, and worship of, the deities. Another inscription of the thirteenth year of Vijayāditya, A.D. 709, records the gift of oil at one *soṇṭige* (ladleful) per oil mill to the *Bhaṭārar* of Aihoḷe at the instance of a certain Eḷṭugolugasani.² A similar gift, including fifty leaves on each *pēru* of betel-leaves, to the shrine of Ādityabhaṭāra in the temple of Āṭada Ālekomarasinga at Aihoḷe is recorded in the reign of Vikramāditya II, and it is said that this had the sanction of the king, and of the *nakara* before the *mahājanas*—evidently an instance of voluntary levy by trade associations made with royal approval and due publicity in the locality for the shrine of Āditya.³ Again when Lokamahādevi, the queen of Vikramāditya II, assigned to Lokeśvara the temple erected by her at Paṭṭadakal, the district of Nareyangal 50, she fixed a payment of two *kula* (*kolaga* of 64 seers) of millet on each *mattar* of land; but this gift is coupled with the unusual statement that its collection could not be enforced by proclamation or distraint by royal officers,⁴ apparently because the queen felt that the religious merit of her work would suffer if force were employed in its maintenance.

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² SII, ix (1), no. 46, ll. 66-67.

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¹ KI, no. 2.

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² IA, viii, 285.

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³ Ibid., viii, 286.

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⁴ Ibid., x, 167. I differ from Fleet's interpretation of *tagappilla*, &c.

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Weights and Measures

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The variety of standards of local weights and measures has always been a marked feature of Indian economic life, and the mention of *rājamāna* (royal measurement) in some of the land grants⁵ may be taken to imply some attempt at standardizing them so far as public accounts went.

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⁵ Gadvāl, Karnūl plates of Ādityavarman; SII, ix (1), no. 48, and so on.

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The People

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Of the people of Mahārāṣṭra under the Chāḷukyas of Bādāmi we possess a general account of an eye-witness in the notes of Hiuen Tsang, who toured the country towards the close of the reign of Pulakēśin II. Hiuen Tsang knew that the king of Mahārāṣṭra was a Kshatriya by birth and that his name was Pu-lo-ki-she; ‘the benevolent sway of this king reached far and wide, and his vassals served him with perfect loyalty’. ‘The inhabitants’, says the pilgrim, ‘were proud-spirited and warlike, grateful for favours and revengeful for wrongs, self-sacrificing towards suppliants in distress and sanguinary to death with any one who treated them insultingly. Their martial heroes who led the van of the army in battle went into conflict intoxicated, and their war-elephants were also made drunk before an engagement. Relying on the strength of his heroes and elephants, the king treated neighbouring countries with contempt.’⁶

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⁶ Watters, ii, 239.

Army and Navy

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The power of Pulakēśin’s army was proved, as we learn also from Hiuen Tsang, in the successful resistance it offered against Harshavardhana’s attempts to extend his sway to the south of the Narmadā. In the century that followed, the same army won renown in many wars, and it became in later times the proud boast of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas that they had risen to eminence after Dantidurga had defeated the Karṇāṭaka army (of the Chālukyas) which had tasted victory in so many encounters.

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That a naval force of some strength was maintained by the Chālukyan monarchs we may infer from the operations against Revatidvīpa and Purī; we have unfortunately no detailed notice of this navy in any of our sources.

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In the life of Hiuen Tsang compiled by his pupil Hwui-li¹ from the notes of the master, we read further: ‘In this country, therefore, the troops and cavalry are carefully equipped, and the rules of warfare thoroughly understood and observed. Whenever a general is dispatched on a warlike expedition, although he is defeated and his army destroyed, he is not himself subjected to bodily punishment, only he has to exchange his soldier’s dress for that of a woman, much to his shame and chagrin. So, many times, those men put themselves to death to avoid such disgrace.’ This curious practice of disgracing soldiers by compelling them to wear women’s clothes is attested by Chōḷa inscriptions relating to the Chālukyan wars of the eleventh century.

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¹ Beal, Life, pp. 146-7.

Learning

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‘The people were fond of learning’, says Hiuen Tsang. Some idea of the training and education of princes has been given already. Inscriptions record several instances of grants made to learned scholars to enable them to devote themselves to the practice of education and religion untroubled by the problem of livelihood. The capital Vātāpi is described in an inscription of Vijayāditya as being adorned by the presence of several thousands of dvijas (twice-born) who were proficient in the ‘fourteen vidyās’;² while another record from the city makes a pointed reference to a kind of academy in the phrase *śri-mahāchāturvidya-samudāyam-irchchāsirvar*, i.e. the 2,000 of the academy of the four great sciences.³ Whether the four great sciences were included in the fourteen of the other inscription or were altogether different, we have no means of deciding. But it is well known that according to tradition the number fourteen refers to the four vedas, six angas, and the Purāṇa, Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya, and Dharmaśāstra, whereas the four vidyās are taken to be ānvikshikī (philosophy), trayī (Veda), vārttā (economics), and daṇḍanīti (politics). The language of the people, Kaṇṇaḍa, is called *prākṛtabhāshā*, the natural tongue, as opposed to the language of culture—*Saṃskṛta*—in the Bādāmi inscription of the reign of Vijayāditya.⁴ The presence of skilled and literate artisans who could engrave long inscriptions mostly in Sanskrit fairly correctly on stone and copper, and the practice of engraving stone inscriptions in public places frequented by the populace, such as the walls of temples and fortresses, may well be an indication of a fair proportion of literacy among the general public; we have little direct evidence about the level of popular education or on the organization and working of popular schools.

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² Ibid., p. 9.

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³ KI, p. 3.

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⁴ Ibid., p. 3, text ll. 9-10.

Arts

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Similarly there is not much direct evidence on the state of the arts, of industry, and of trade, though there is every indication that these were, speaking generally, to be found all over the country in a fairly advanced and prosperous condition. Of the excellence attained in architecture and sculpture during the period we can form a reasonably good idea from the stone monuments which have survived intact to this day, and the inscriptions give us the names of the donors and artists whose co-operation raised these forms of beauty which still astonish and please the traveller and student from other lands and cultures. The architect who built the Lokeśvara (now Virūpāksha) temple was called Śrī Guṇḍan Anivāritāchāri; he was dubbed Tribhuvanāchāri for the excellent work he did in the construction of the temple, and he was able to procure for the superior artisans (binnāṇigal) of his class exemptions from some imposts, though not from fines for wrongs committed by them. Among the other titles borne by this celebrated architect are some which indicate that he had a great part in the planning of several cities—*aneka pura-vāstu-pitāmahan*—and in the construction of palaces, vehicles, thrones, and furniture, *vāstu-prāsāda-yān-āsana-śayana-maṇimakuṭa-ratna-chūḍāmaṇi*.¹ In fact he was so eminent as to become known as *temkana diśeya sūtradhāri*, i.e. the architect of the southern region. He must have been responsible also, directly or indirectly, for the decorative sculptures in the Virūpāksha temple which depict scenes from the *Rāmāyaṇa* and also bear inscriptions designed to identify the persons and situations there depicted.² The Paṭṭadakal pillar inscription of the time of Kīrtti-varman II mentions three generations of another line of architects and sculptors (*rūpas*) who belonged to the Śāṇḍilya *gotra*, viz. Śivavarddhamān, his son Śiva and his son Śubhadeva, who also seem to have had a hand in the erection and decoration of the famous temples of this city.³

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¹ IA, x, 164-5.

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² Ibid., p. 168.

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³ EI, iii, 5.

The Temple

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The role of the temple in the social economy of India can hardly be exaggerated. Almost all the useful arts and fine arts of the country flourished around it, and were devoted primarily to the divine service, which was also the service of society pursued in a spirit of consecration. Besides providing employment on a considerable scale for the best technical skill available in the land, the temple was the centre for regular free feeding of scholars and holy men, and it also distributed alms to the needy. The Bādāmi inscription of Mangaleśa¹ records for instance that the village of Lañjiśvaram was given to the new Viṣṇu temple for nārāyaṇa-bali (funerary offering for ascetics), the regular feeding of sixteen Brāhmans every day, and the feeding as far as resources allowed of parivrājakas (ascetics); while dāna-śālas (alms-houses) are mentioned in the Lakshmeśvar inscription² of Vikramāditya II and the Ādūr inscription³ of the time of Kīrtti-varman II. An inscription in Paṭṭadakal mentions the musicians (gāndharvar) of the temple, the privileges which these had obtained from Vijayāditya, and the confirmation of the same by the queen Lokamahādevī.⁴ Another inscription, also from Paṭṭadakal, comprises two verses in Sanskrit in the Āryā metre signed at the end by Achalada; these beautiful verses are eloquent mementos of what must have been an exciting chapter in the history of the art of dancing in the Western Deccan; they mention the rising popularity of a new work on the dance following the precepts of Bharata which secured a decisive victory for the school of Bharata against the votaries of the rival school or schools, referred to as para-naṭa and kuṭilonnata-naṭa, i.e. the hostile actor and the actor who is crookedly eminent.⁵ The garland-makers of the new stone temple of Mangaleśa and endowments in their favour form the subject of an inscription from Bādāmi of the time of Mangaleśa or a little later.⁶

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¹ IA, vi, 363.

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² KI, i, 7-8.

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³ Ibid., p. 167.

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⁴ Ibid., vii, 106.

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⁵ IA, x, p. 166.

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⁶ Ibid., p. 60.

Religion

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Hiuen Tsang observed that in the sphere of religion, the people of Mahārāṣṭra combined orthodoxy with heterodoxy; there were more than 100 Buddhist monasteries and the Brethren, who were adherents of both vehicles, were more than 5,000 in number.⁷ In the Life we read further: ‘There are also followers of the heretics who worship the devas and cover themselves with ashes.’⁸ In the capital, by which the pilgrim did not mean Vātāpi but probably Nāsik, there were five Aśoka stūpas, and innumerable others of stone and brick. At the end of his account of Mahārāṣṭra, the pilgrim gives a description of the caves of Ajanta which, according to Watters, is that of an eye-witness, though other commentators are not so sure of this. ‘In the east of this country’, says Hiuen Tsang, ‘was a mountain range, ridges one above another in succession, tiers of peaks and sheer summits. Here was a monastery the base of which was in a dark defile, and its lofty halls and deep chambers were quarried in the cliff at their back and faced the ravine. This monastery had been built by the A-che-lo (Āchāra) of West India. . . . Within the establishment was a large temple about 100 feet high in which was a stone image of the Buddha more than seventy feet in height; the image was surrounded by a tier of seven canopies unattached and unsupported, each canopy separated from the one above it by a space of three feet. The walls of the temple had depicted on them the incidents of the Buddha’s career as Bodhisattva, including the circumstances of his attaining bodhi and the omens attending his final passing away, all, great and small, were here delineated. Outside the gate of the monastery, on either side north and south, was a stone elephant, and the pilgrim was informed that the bellowing of these elephants caused earthquakes. The Pu’sa Ch’en-na or Diṅnāga often stayed in this monastery.¹ Much in this description is obviously the result of a pious memory playing upon experiences which were vivid during the pilgrimage, but no longer so at the time of writing. And there is little in the inscriptions of the time to confirm or contradict the account of the state of Buddhism in Mahārāṣṭra given by the Chinese Master of the Law; they simply pass Buddhism by and give themselves solely to the ‘heretics’.

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⁷ Watters, ii, 239

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⁸ Life, p. 147.

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The members of the royal family seem to have been generally devotees of Śiva and Viṣṇu for whose worship they built and dedicated the most important temples of the time in Bādāmi, Paṭṭadakal, and elsewhere. Though they themselves bestowed and sanctioned the bestowal by others of benefactions on Jain shrines and monasteries, there is not one clear case of any of them having embraced Jainism. The first kings of the line, Pulakēśin I, Kīrttivarman, Mangaleśa, and Pulakēśin II, seem to have gloried in the performance of Vedic sacrifices, in honouring learned Brāhmans and in earning for themselves titles like *brahmanya*, a title in the Sātavāhana tradition, *parama-māheśvara* and *paramavaiṣṇava*. They made grants during eclipses¹ and performed the *vratas* and *dānas* prescribed in the *smṛtis* of the land. The Nerūr grant of Mangaleśa, for instance, says that he fasted on a *Kārttika-dvādaśī* day and worshipped Viṣṇu before giving away the village of Kuṇḍivāṭaka to a Vedic scholar.² The same ruler transferred the merits of his excavation of the cave temple and the installation of the image of Viṣṇu to his elder brother Kīrtti-varman, pouring out water, a formal act of confirmation, in the presence of the Sun, Fire, and the Mahājanas, claiming for himself only the merit of having served his brother and protected his benefactions. Such formalities are seen to have attended almost every donation or gift. The gifts are sometimes earmarked for the specific purpose of the performance of domestic rituals, as in the Satāra grant of Viṣṇuvardhana³ which records the gift of a village to a group of Brāhmans, all brothers from one family, and describes the purpose of the gift as: *bali-charu vaiśvadeva-agnihotra-havana-pañcha-mahāyajñ-otsarpanārtham*. The Talamanchi plates of Vikramāditya end characteristically with a benediction on cows and Brāhmans—*svastyastu gō-brāhmaṇebhyaḥ*. That there were periodical festivals observed in temples is attested by the reference to the Paitāmahi Hiranyagarbha-mahotsava on the full-moon day in the month of Kārttika as the occasion of the gift recorded in the Karnūl plates of the first regnal year of Ādityavarman.¹ The contact maintained by Deccani Śaivism with its fountain sources in northern India is made clear by the presence of Jñānaśivāchārya from the northern bank of the Ganges as an *archaka* of the Vijayeśvara (Sangameśvara) temple at Paṭṭadakal; this *āchārya* made an endowment of thirty *nivartanas* of land at a cost of thirty *gadyāṇas*, intended to pay for popular lectures by *āchāryas* and the *pūjā* in the temple, as well as the materials needed for it.

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¹ Haidarabad grant of Pulakēśin II, Talamanchi and Honnūr plates, &c.

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² *IA*, vii, 161.

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³ Ibid., xix, 309-10.

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¹ JBBRAS, xvi, 233-5.

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Jainism had a considerable vogue and was much respected. Ravikīrtti, who built a stone temple to Jina at Ahiọle, claims to have enlisted the particular favour of Pulakēśin II for his enterprise and thus made the temple the abode of all excellence (*bhavanam mahimnām*). The temple that Kuṅkumadēvī caused to be built at Guḍigere has already been mentioned. Kaliyamma, the Jaina headman of Jebuḷagēri, built a *chediya* at Annigere in the reign of Kīrtti-varman II; and Koṇḍiśūlara-Kuppa, *alias* Kīrtti-varman *gosai*, erected a statue in front of the temple; the *prabhunāma* (named after the suzerain) of the Jaina ascetic is worth noting.² Other evidence proving the flourishing condition of Jainism which is found in the inscriptions need not be detailed here, though some of it will be noticed in the sketch that follows of the literature of the period.

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² EI, xxi, 204.

Literature: Sanskrit

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Sanskrit literature was being studied and cultivated in its various branches. The proficiency of the princes of the royal family and of the numerous scholars patronized by them in *Purāṇa*, *Śāstra*, and so on has been noticed above. The inscriptions bear evidence of the strong influence of the classics on the literary and epigraphical compositions of the time. The Mahākūṭa pillar inscription of Mangaleśa is a landmark in literary development since it shows that by about A.D. 600 the florid prose writing which is generally associated with the great Bāṇa, the court-poet of Harshavardhana of Northern India, had reached an advanced development in the south, for the inscription borrows freely striking terms and phrases from the *Arthaśāstra*, the *Rāmāyaṇa*, and the *Raghuvamśa* of Kālidāsa. The Jaina poet Ravikīrtti, the author of the Aihoḷe *praśasti* of Pulakēśin II, modelled his composition consciously, as Kielhorn has demonstrated, on the *digvijaya* of Raghu as described by Kālidāsa in the *Raghuvamśa*, and claims at the end of the inscription that he has attained a fame equal to that of Kālidāsa and Bhāravi. Though this is an extravagant claim, the composition is not devoid of literary merit and makes skilful use of several metres. The Gaṅga king Durvinīta, father-in-law and feudatory of Pulakēśin II, is said to have composed a work on Sanskrit grammer, and commented on that literary freak, the *Śabdāvatāra*, and commented on that literary freak, the fifteenth canto of the *Kirātārjunīya* of Bhāravi;¹ he seems also to have been the author of the earliest Sanskrit version, no longer extant, of the *Br̥hat-Kathā* of Guṇāḍhya. Vijayabhaṭṭārikā, the queen of Candrāditya, may well be identical, as P. V. Kane has suggested, with the poetess Vijayāṅkā or Vijjikā who claims to have been well beloved by the king of Karṇāṭa (*Karṇāṭarājapriyā*) and accuses the poet Daṇḍin of having described Sarasvatī, the goddess of learning, as all white, in ignorance of her true colour, dark like the petal of the blue lotus; the few verses attributed to her in the anthologies go far to justify the high praise bestowed on her by Rājaśekhara, an eminent literary critic of the tenth century A.D., who says that after Kālidāsa, the Karṇāṭa poetess of the name of Vijayā takes rank as the abode of the Vaidarbhī style of writing.² The two *Āryā* verses of Achalada on the triumph of the Bharata school of *nāṭya* (dance) must also be noted here, both for their literary quality and for their reference to a forgotten chapter in the history of the art and literature of the dance. The Jaina grammarian and divine, Pūjyapāda, the author of *Jainendravyākaraṇa*, a work on Sanskrit grammar, figures as the teacher of Niravadya-Udayadevapaṇḍita, who received the grant of a village from Vijayāditya when he was camping at Raktapura (Lakṣmeśvar) in Ś. 651 (A.D. 729).³ Another famous Jaina writer in Sanskrit was Somadevasūri who flourished more than two centuries later, was patronized by the Cāḷukyas of Vemulavāḍa, and was the author of the *Yaśastilaka-campū*, a romantic tale into which the author weaves much salutary moral instruction and propaganda against animal sacrifice and in favour of the tenets of Jainism; his second work, *Nītivākyāmṛta*, is much more interesting to the student of Indian political literature as it is really an *Arthaśāstra* suffused with the *dharmic* point of view. Somadeva’s vast learning and his great merits as a stylist are evident in every page of both his works.⁴

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¹ Keith’s doubts on this matter (*His. of Skt. Liter.*, p. xvii) are misplaced except in so far as they concern the evidence of the *Avantīsundarīkathā* and its *Sāra*.

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² Kane’s ed. *Sāhityadarpaṇa* (1923), pp. xl-xli; and V. Raghavan, *Sanskrit and Prakrit Poetesses*, QJMS, xxxv.

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³ DKD, p. 373; Rice, *Kan. Lit.*, pp. 26-27.

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⁴ Keith, *His. of Skt. Liter.*, pp. 333-6 and 463-4.

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Kannaḍa

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Of the literature in the language of the people, Kannaḍa, very little has survived except a few names from these early times, though evidence is not lacking that there must have been a considerable volume of prose and poetic works which had come into existence before Nr̥patunga, the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king, composed his *Kavirājamārga*, the earliest extant work on rhetoric in Kannaḍa. The Durvinīta mentioned in this work as one of the best writers of Kannaḍa prose may well be the Gaṅga contemporary and father-in-law of Pulakēśin II; if this was so, Durvinīta must be considered to have been equally proficient in Kannaḍa and in Sanskrit. Another celebrated writer was Śrīvardhadeva, also called Tumbuḷūrācārya from the place of his birth; he is known to have written an extensive work (96,000 verses) called *Cūḍāmaṇi* in the form of a commentary on the *Tattvārtha-mahāśāstra*. This work is no longer extant though the great Kannaḍa grammarian Bhaṭṭākalanka (A.D. 1604) knew the book and referred to it as the greatest work in the language.¹ Śyāmakundācārya, who is mentioned by later writers as an author in the Prākṛit, Sanskrit, and Karṇāṭa languages, also flourished about the same time as Tumbuḷūrācārya or perhaps a little later (c. A.D. 650).

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¹ Rice, op. cit., p. 27.

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Pampa, who says that his ancestors came from Vengi, was himself born in A.D. 902 and flourished at the court of Arikesari II of Vemulavāḍa. He composed two great poems in a single year at the comparatively early age of thirty-two; they are justly celebrated as among the greatest classics of Kannaḍa literature. His *Ādi-purāṇa* narrates the life story of the first *tīrthamkara* according to the Jaina tradition; the other work, *Vikramārjuna Vijaya*, contains the author's own version of a section of the *Mahābhārata* story, and is on that account often called *Pampa-bhārata*; in it the poet makes Arjuna the hero and identifies his patron Arikesari with Arjuna, which gives him the occasion for introducing at several points many interesting details of contemporary secular history. Critics have hailed Pampa unanimously as the most eminent among Kanarese poets.

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