kṣāli<
who is as bright as the moon, so that his fame is like lime whitewash nectar for the palace that is the universe, and the effusion of his glory light shines permanently like a lamp in the middle of that palace—
the concealed pearls of the forehead globes of whose enemies’ elephants shine open to view when he splits the surface of those globes, strung like a string of flowers on the liana that is his sword—My translation involves stretching the boundaries of syntax and compound structure to the extreme in order to accommodate the unexpected word sthagita in the original which, if deliberate, was probably meant to countered by sphuṭam. If sthagita is a mistake for a word meaning something like “revealed,” then a much easier translation would be: “the string of pearls revealed by whose splitting of the surface of the forehead globes of his enemies’ elephants shine clearly like a string of flowers on the liana that is his sword—”. For a similar image, compare verse 15 of the [Raṇastipūṇḍi grant of Vimalāditya](DHARMA_INSVengiCalukya00049.xml).
who, aglow with wounds, attained fame even in childhood bālya in the battle with the Colas;According to KR, the same battle is referred to as dramiḷāhava in the Pabhupaṟṟu grant of Śaktivarman. Apparently (191), this grant has only been published in the Āndhra Sāhitya Parishad Patrikā, and neither the original nor any good facsimiles remain available. However, the [Guṇḍipoduṟu grant of Śaktivarman](DHARMA_INSVengiCalukya00103.xml) has now been edited and refers, probably, to the same episode as drāviḍa-saṁggare, so understanding caulika to refer to some Coḻa rulers is probably warranted even though Śaktivarman eventually married a Coḻa princess and reclaimed the throne of Veṅgī with his father-in-law’s support. KR’s interpretation that “a battle for the Coḻas/Tamils” is meant is not impossible, but rather forced. KR further notes that bālya probably indicates an age up to 16 years, as defined in Dharmaśāstras. who routed the overly conceited King mahārāja Badyema and others; who demonstrated his own fortitude, unrivalled in the world, by killing the assassins sent by his enemies (even) while he was wounded in the chestSee the apparatus to line 47 for a slight uncertainty in this passage.—the King adhipa His Majesty Śaktivarman.
-Mentally laughing at the divine Nārāyaṇa, thinking, “he is said to have defeated the hosts of demons daitya in olden days by abandoning his own form and taking recourse to faked identities like the Fish,” this Cālukya-Nārāyaṇa Śaktivarman, in addition to having cast down his other enemies, put to death in battle His Majesty the masterful King adhipa Coḍa-Bhīma, who was a likeness of Rāvaṇa.Given the first hemistich, one would expect the stanza to say that Cālukya-Nārāyaṇa laugs at the divine Nārāyaṇa because he does not need a false guise to defeat his enemies. This is indeed how RK summarises the stanza, but I see no way to finding that meaning in the text. The second hemistich is an awkward jumble of words. Most jarringly, it lacks a verbal form to express the action. Moreover, it uses surprisingly flattering terminology īśa and śrī for the enemy Coḍa-Bhīma, and even though api ought to imply a contradiction (“even though he had first cast down his enemies”), I see no such thing, nor any need for a reference to enemies in general here. Conversely, there is nothing in the second hemistich about Cālukya-Nārāyaṇa doing so in his own form, nor is there a counterpart here to prāk, “in olden days.” The only point where the second hemistich matches the first is that this human Nārāyaṇa defeats an enemy likened to Rāvaṇa, who was defeated by the divine Nārāyaṇa in the form of Rāma. The text on the plate is quite clearly legible and includes only one evident scribal mistake (°āṣāsta), where the composer’s original intent is quite straightforward (°āpāsta). I wonder if perhaps the fourth quarter belongs originally to a different stanza. Two stanzas may have been either cobbled together badly by a clumsy composer, or a quarter of the first and three quarters of the second may have been omitted by an inattentive scribe.
-Churning with the power of his own arms the ocean of the army rathinī of the lord of Utkalikā—this ocean in which the sea monsters makara are fearsomely caparisonedI am somewhat baffled by the juxtaposition of vāraṇa and ibha, both normally meaning “elephant.” It may be that two different kinds of elephants were meant by the composer, but neither of these words has the connotation of a particular sort of elephant. I therefore prefer to take vāraṇa in the more literal, though uncommon, sense of “fending off,” i.e. armour, loosely rendered in my translation as “caparison.” raging elephants, in which the crocodiles nakra are processions of heroes, which swells with water that is blood and tumbles with thousands of strings of waves which are horses—this Cālukya-Nārāyaṇa seizes in battle the Royal Fortune śrī belonging to that lord of Utkalikā as the divine Nārāyaṇa churned the ocean and seized the goddess Śrī who had belonged to that ocean.
-That shelter of all the world sarva-lokāśraya, His Majesty Viṣṇuvardhana, the supremely pious Supreme Lord parameśvara of Emperors mahārājādhirāja, the Supreme Sovereign parama-bhaṭṭāraka and supreme devotee of Maheśvara, convokes all householders kuṭumbin—including foremost the territorial overseers rāṣṭrakūṭa—who reside in Vaṟanāṇḍu district viṣaya, and commands the minister mantrin, the chaplain purohita, the general senāpati, the crown prince yuvarāja and the commander of the guard dauvārikādhyakṣa as follows. To wit:
- Bhāradvāja was born who was familiar with all śāstras.
-There was his son, truth,Or perhaps, “named Satya*”. devoted to the six duties of a Brahmin together with prudent men, ritual calls āśravaṇa and the ritual responses pratyāśravaṇa a great practicioner of sacrifices.
-Now of his son named Vennamayya was born the sunOr perhaps, “named *āditya”., the foremost of the priestly lineage.
- in grammatics by the water of his ablutions washed off the stain of sin.
-Who was ever a giver of benign assets to a progression of learned men, relatives and the needy; who came to the aid of his own lord’s administrative affairs kārya as well as his sword; whose expansive intellect appeared as if it were the mind of the sage Bhāradvāja of laudable intelligence, returning into his own Brahmanical lineage gotra in the fullness of its original extent.Parts of this stanza are illegible. I am quite confident that the essence of the original ran much as I reconstruct in my translation, but I cannot provide even tentative Sanskrit readings for the words marked as supplied in the translation. The name Bhāradvāja may refer to the patriarch Bharadvāja himself (with the first syllable lengthened for the sake of the metre), or it may indicate a famous personage descended from him, possibly Droṇa, the son of Bharadvāja, who in spite of being a Brahmin was famed for his skill with weapons.
-A repository of virtues even greater than him was
-
-
+Mentally laughing at the divine Nārāyaṇa, thinking, “he is said to have defeated the hosts of demons daitya in olden days by abandoning his own form and taking recourse to faked identities like the Fish,” this Cālukya-Nārāyaṇa Śaktivarman, in addition to having cast down his other enemies, put to death in battle His Majesty the masterful King adhipa Coḍa-Bhīma, who was a likeness of Rāvaṇa.Given the first hemistich, one would expect the stanza to say that Cālukya-Nārāyaṇa laugs at the divine Nārāyaṇa because he does not need a false guise to defeat his enemies. This is indeed how RK summarises the stanza, but I see no way to finding that meaning in the text. The second hemistich is an awkward jumble of words. Most jarringly, it lacks a verbal form to express the action. Moreover, it uses surprisingly flattering terminology īśa and śrī for the enemy Coḍa-Bhīma, and while api ought to imply a contradiction (“even though he had first cast down his enemies”), I see no such thing, nor any need for a reference to enemies in general here. Conversely, there is nothing in the second hemistich about Cālukya-Nārāyaṇa doing so in his own form, nor is there a counterpart here to prāk, “in olden days.” The only point where the second hemistich matches the first is that this human Nārāyaṇa defeats an enemy likened to Rāvaṇa, who was defeated by the divine Nārāyaṇa in the form of Rāma. The text on the plate is quite clearly legible and includes only one evident scribal mistake (°āṣāsta), where the composer’s original intent is quite straightforward (°āpāsta). I wonder if perhaps the fourth quarter belongs originally to a different stanza. Two stanzas may have been either cobbled together badly by a clumsy composer, or a quarter of the first and three quarters of the second may have been omitted by an inattentive scribe.
+Churning with the power of his own arms the ocean of the army rathinī of the lord of Utkalikā—this ocean in which the sea monsters makara are fearsome, inexorable,I am somewhat baffled by the juxtaposition of vāraṇa and ibha, both normally meaning “elephant.” It may be that two different kinds of elephants were meant by the composer, but neither of these words has the connotation of a particular sort of elephant. I therefore prefer to take vāraṇa in the less common sense of “invincible.” raging elephants, in which the crocodiles nakra are processions of heroes, which swells with water that is blood and tumbles with thousands of strings of waves which are horses—this Cālukya-Nārāyaṇa seizes in battle the Royal Fortune śrī belonging to that lord of Utkalikā as the divine Nārāyaṇa churned the ocean and seized the goddess Śrī who had belonged to that ocean.
+That shelter of all the world sarva-lokāśraya, His Majesty Viṣṇuvardhana, the supremely pious Supreme Lord parameśvara of Emperors mahārājādhirāja, the Supreme Sovereign parama-bhaṭṭāraka and supreme devotee of Maheśvara, convokes all householders kuṭumbin—including foremost the territorial overseers rāṣṭrakūṭa—who reside in Vaṟanāṇḍu district viṣaya, and, witnessed by the minister mantrin, the chaplain purohita, the general senāpati, the crown prince yuvarāja and the gate guard dauvārika, commands them as follows. To wit:
+In a lineage of Brahmans, there was born the excellent and most righteous , like a new sage Bhāradvāja, the enricher of his lineage, holy puṇya, familiar with all the treatises.
+He had a son named Vennamayya, of the truthful, honourable and engaged in acts befitting honourable men, driven by Vedic injunction, of those rich in and possessed of diplomacy naya, with boosted by the ritual calls āśravaṇa and the ritual responses pratyāśravaṇa a great practicioner of sacrifices.
+Then that one named Vennamayya had a son born, the most excellent of his priestly family.
+He duly gratifies the gods as well as the ancestors pitr̥ by sacrificial offerings havya and oblations kavya and suchlike. His stains of sin have been washed off by the water of the ablutions offered to the feet of his guests. He is eternally a leaderOr perhaps “patron”? See the apparatus to line 63. granting the beneficial objects of their desire to the flock of the learned, his relatives and the destitute. He has come to the aid of his own lord’s administrative affairs kārya as well as his sword.
+This peerless repository of virtues, with extensive acumen, has surpassed even that sage Bhāradvāja whose intellect is praised by savants, as that sage rescued his lineage gotra, which was deteriorating, merely by granting it his name, while he did so by The end of this stanza is lost, and the reading of the extant part is not entirely certain. The gist of the verse probably ran along lines similar to what is translated here. The name Bhāradvāja may refer to the patriarch Bharadvāja himself (with the first syllable lengthened for the sake of the metre), or it may indicate a famous personage descended from him, possibly Droṇa, the son of Bharadvāja, who in spite of being a Brahmin was famed for his skill with weapons.
@@ -804,7 +801,6 @@ n="63" break="no"/>-padāṁ prakṣāli<
-
KR prints most of these stanzas as clearly legible, and for restorations at the ends of lines indicates that they are restored with the help of the other well-known copper plate grants
of the Eastern Cālukyas. As of October 2021, I am aware parallel stanzas in the [Nāgiyapūṇḍi grant of Amma II](DHARMA_INSVengiCalukya00041.xml) and in the [Kaṇḍyam plates of Dānārṇava](DHARMA_INSVengiCalukya00071.xml). The latter is poorly edited without a facsimile of this plate that would allow verification, so its readings are unreliable. I generally accept KR's readings here, but add my indications of uncertainty and mark up the text as supplied where I find it wholly illegible in the facsimile.
KR, in my opinion, misunderstands this stanza in his discussion, stating first that Vijayāditya III chased Kannara and Śaṅkila into the impregnable country, but then adding in a note that this impregnable country was evidently the kingdom of Baddega
. He may have done so on the assumption that his restoration durggamān (with sandhi for durggamāt) was a singular ablative qualifying janapadāt, but the much better preserved parallel version clearly reads durggaman (with sandhi for durggamam), which I find to be better in context, establishing a contrast between janapada and durggama.The [Kaṇḍyam plates of Dānārṇava](DHARMA_INSVengiCalukya00071.xml) reportedly also read durggamān. If this can be confirmed from a facsimile, then the same reading may also be acceptable here, but it should still be construed as a plural accusative (durggamān scil. deśān), not a singular ablative. KR’s editor (probably Sircar) also thinks that the badlands are not identical to Baddega’s homeland. KR’s interpretation also states that Guṇaga Vijayāditya protected Baddega from fear
. However, it can only be Vijayāditya himself who is described here as fearless.
Sandhi-obscured caesura in v12 (śārdūlavikrīḍita) c. The break between pādas c and d is obscured by sandhi in v22 (also śārdūlavikrīḍita).
The outer side of the last extant plate is heavily corroded and in many places illegible or barely legible. With the photos of the original, I have been able to provide a reading for most of it. Text shown on this plate as unclear may be almost clear to almost completely indistinct so long as it is confidently readable in the context, but minor details such as scribal mistakes may in fact be different than shown here. Text shown as unclear with low certainty is poorly legible to all but lost and tentatively reconstructed from the vestiges. Text shown as supplied includes no interpretable vestiges and is tentatively reconstructed from context. My numbering of stanzas, which I believe to be correct, differs slightly from the numbering in KR's edition as well as from that in an earlier version of this digital edition created without access to the original.