Alas plates of the Yuvaraja Govinda II

The Alas plates are a grant of the Rashtrakuta crown prince Govinda II, issued in the reign of his father Krishna I.¹² They are the earliest record of the long war between the Rashtrakutas and the Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi.¹² They also place a Rashtrakuta camp on the lower Krishna, on the edge of the Telugu country.¹²

Discovery and description

The plates were found in the village of Alas, in the Kurundwad State of the Bombay Presidency, while an old earth buttress was being dug out.¹ The Senior Chief of Kurundwad sent them to R. G. Bhandarkar.¹ He passed them to his son D. R. Bhandarkar, who published them in Epigraphia Indica VI (1901).¹

There are three plates, held by a ring whose ends are joined by a knob bearing a round seal.¹ The first and third plates are written on the inner side, and the second on both sides.¹ On the seal is Garuda, seated, “with the palms of his hands joined close to his breast and with his wings raised”, above a floral device.¹

The engraving is deep but “not well executed”, and some letters are almost illegible.¹ The characters are of the southern type used under the later Chalukyas of Badami, and the language is Sanskrit throughout.¹ Most of the verses also occur in other Rashtrakuta grants, and all of them in the Paithan grant of Govinda III of 794.¹

Contents

The grant was made by Govindaraja, the son of Krishnaraja (Krishna I), while he was heir-apparent (Yuvaraja).¹ It is dated in words: the Saka year 692, the cyclic year Saumya, the seventh day of the bright half of Ashadha.¹ The editor equated this with 770.¹

In Bhandarkar’s translation, Govinda issued it “from (the camp of) the victorious army that invaded the Vengi-mandala”.³ This was “when the lord of Vengi was humbled by the cession of (his) treasury, (his) forces, and his own country”.³ The camp was “at the confluence of the Krishnaverna and the Musi”.³

The grant gave a village to a Brahmin named Jaggu of the Bharadvaja gotra (clan).³ The village was on the bank of the Prasadini river, south of the Hariyagiri hill, in the Alaktaka district.³ The gift was made at the request of Vijayaditya, son of Dantivarman and grandson of Dhruvaraja, and Srisena wrote the grant.³

Bhandarkar identified Alaktaka with the Alata division of the Kolhapur State.² He identified the village of Arasiyavada named in the grant with Alas itself.²

The Krishna and the Musi

Bhandarkar noted that the Musi “is the last important feeder of the Krishna”.² It “joins it on the confines of the modern Kistna district of the Madras Presidency”.² He drew a conclusion from the grant: hostilities “had sprung up between the two rival dynasties long before the time of Govinda III”.² His reason was that a prince of Krishna I had already reduced the king of Vengi in 770.²

Robert Sewell placed the camp on the borders of the Palnad taluk, south of the Krishna.⁴ He took the king of Vengi to be Vishnuvardhana IV, and he took the defeat to be real.⁴ But he did not think that the Rashtrakutas annexed his country.⁴ (See Vishnuvardhana IV.)

The grant also names the predecessor of Krishna I as Dantivarman, not Dantidurga.² According to a grant of 812, Krishna I uprooted a “relative”.² Bhandarkar used the Alas grant to argue that Dantidurga was not that “relative”.² His reason was that this grant, of Krishna I’s own reign, has a verse saying that Krishna became king after Dantidurga had gone to heaven.²

Is the record genuine?

J. F. Fleet returned to the plates in 1903.⁵ He pointed to “the bad formation of the characters, and the occasional very marked irregularity of the lines of the writing”.⁵ These, he wrote, “suffice to shew that these Alas plates do not contain the original and synchronous official record”.⁵

He still thought that the record was based on “something genuine”, perhaps a manuscript copy of a lost original.⁵ He accepted it for the time being as proof that Govinda II was crown prince under Krishna I in 770.⁵ He did not take it as proof that Govinda later reigned as king.⁵

Footnotes

1. D. R. Bhandarkar, “Alas Plates of the Yuvaraja Govinda II; Saka-Samvat 692”, Epigraphia Indica VI (1901), p. 208 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵

2. Bhandarkar, “Alas Plates” (1901), p. 209 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

3. Bhandarkar, “Alas Plates” (1901), p. 213, translation (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Robert Sewell, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 30 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. J. F. Fleet, “Some Rashtrakuta Records”, Epigraphia Indica VII (1903), p. 231 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶