Chipurupalle plates of Vishnuvardhana I

This grant of Kubja-Vishnuvardhana is the first record in which the founder of the Eastern Chalukyas appears as a king in his own right.¹ In it he has the title Maharaja.¹ Its date is an eclipse of the moon in the eighteenth year of his reign.²³ It gave J. F. Fleet the fixed point from which he worked out the reigns of the whole dynasty.²³

Discovery and present location

A Mr. Master first brought the plates to notice in 1867 and sent them to the Madras Government.⁴ The Rev. T. Foulkes published a fairly accurate translation in 1870.⁴ From the papers Foulkes quoted, the plates were found near the village of Chipurupalle.⁴ This was the chief town of the Chipurupalle taluk of Visakhapatnam (then Vizagapatam) district.⁴

A. C. Burnell printed a lithograph (printed copy) of them.⁵ He said that they were found in the Vizianagaram zamindari (landholder’s estate) in 1867.⁵ The Vizagapatam gazetteer of 1907 says that three sets of copper plates were found in the village in that year, one of them this grant.⁶ See Chipurupalle.

By 1891 the plates had been lost sight of, and E. Hultzsch’s efforts to trace them failed.⁴ So Fleet edited the inscription from Burnell’s lithograph.⁴ He regretted that the originals could not be cleaned and photographed again.⁴ He felt this “especially in respect of the numerical symbols in the date at the end of the record”.⁴

Description, script and language

There are three plates, about 7 by 2 inches if Burnell’s lithograph is full size.⁴ The first and last are inscribed on one side only.⁴ They are smooth, without raised rims, and the writing is perfectly preserved.⁴ Each has a ring-hole, but Fleet found no record of whether the ring and seal were found with the plates.⁴

The letters belong to the southern class of alphabets.⁴ The language is Sanskrit throughout, all in prose except for two of the usual curse verses.⁴ Burnell thought the writing differed very little from the earlier “Vengi character” except in its regularity and neatness.⁵ It showed no cursive (running) forms, which in his view first appear late in the 7th century.⁵

Content

The grant opens with “the Maharaja Satyashraya, the favourite of fortune”.⁷ In his history of the Kanarese districts, J. F. Fleet names Vishnuvardhana I as the younger brother of Pulakesin II, so Satyashraya here is Pulakesin II.⁸ Then comes his “dear younger brother”, the Maharaja Vishnuvardhana.⁷ The king is called Vishamasiddhi, “because he has achieved success against fortresses, difficult of access”.⁷ These fortresses stood “on the plains, in the water, in the woods, and on hills”.⁷

He was living at the town of Cherupura, in a district whose name Fleet read doubtfully as Puki.⁷ From there he addresses the cultivators of the village of Kalvakonda in the Dimila district.⁷ On the occasion of an eclipse of the moon in the month Sravana, he gives the village as a tax-free agrahara (Brahmin village).⁷

The receivers were two brothers, Vishnusarman and Madhavasarman of the Gautama gotra (clan) and the Taittiriya school, grandsons of Brahmasarman.⁷ The ajnapti, the officer who passed on the order, was Atavidurjaya.⁷¹ Fleet read his family as the Matsya family.⁷¹

The places

Fleet thought Cherupura was probably an older form of the name of Chipurupalle itself.⁴⁹ He could not identify the district of issue unless it was “Pudi”, seven miles south-west of Chipurupalle.⁴⁹ He thought the name Kalvakonda no longer survived, unless in a “Kondakirla” on the map seven miles north-west of the town.⁴⁹ He had “no doubt”, however, that the Dimila district was preserved in the village of Dimile.⁴⁹ Dimile lies in the Sarvasiddhi taluk, fourteen miles south-west of Chipurupalle.⁴⁹

This mattered, he argued, because it showed that Vishnuvardhana’s rule now included land well to the north-east of Vengi.⁹ The later records treat Vengi as the special seat of the dynasty.⁹ Burnell drew a similar conclusion, since the grant was found “far north”.⁵ In his view the Chalukyas had probably seized the northern Telugu coast first and conquered the south afterwards.⁵ The Vizagapatam gazetteer took the grants as showing that Vishnuvardhana “once ruled as far north as that village”.¹⁰

Date

The record gives its date twice.⁹⁷ The text names a lunar eclipse in Sravana.⁹⁷ The last line gives number signs that Fleet read as “the year 18, the month 4, the day 15”.⁹⁷ Fleet had first read the year as 16, as Burnell’s printed text also has it, and later corrected it to 18.⁷ He showed that there was no lunar eclipse in Sravana in the eighteenth year of Pulakesin II, so the year must be Vishnuvardhana’s own.¹¹

Three dates have been proposed for the eclipse:

Burnell chose the eclipse of 28 July 622, which “appears to satisfy all the necessary conditions”.¹¹⁵ He wrote that it showed Vishnuvardhana “was reigning in 622 A.D.”.¹¹⁵
James Burgess, in notes he gave Fleet in 1878, preferred 17 July 628, because that eclipse was fully visible in India.¹¹ Burnell had rejected it as falling in the evening, which astrology did not allow.¹¹
Fleet rejected both.¹¹³¹² Each would put the start of Vishnuvardhana’s reign three or four years before his elder brother came to the throne, which he called “out of the question”.¹¹³¹² He chose the eclipse of 7 July 632, visible all over India, on the full moon of Sravana, Saka 555 current (Saka is an Indian way of counting years).¹¹³¹² This reckoning places the first year of the reign in 615.¹¹³¹²

Later use of Fleet’s date

F. Kielhorn’s list of southern inscriptions (1903) adopted Fleet’s date.¹³ So did V. Rangacharya’s topographical list (1919).¹⁴ Robert Sewell’s chronology of 1932 also enters the grant under 7 July 632.¹⁵ It takes the grant to fix the king’s accession in the year after 8 July 614.¹⁵ Fleet noted that the date might also fit regnal years counted from the first day of Chaitra instead of from Vaisakha.¹⁶ He set out another table on that basis.¹⁶

Edition

J. F. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. 193: Chipurupalle Copper-Plate Grant of Vishnuvardhana I, Dated in His Eighteenth Year”, Indian Antiquary XX (1891), pp. 15–17, edited from Burnell’s lithograph.⁴ Earlier: T. Foulkes’s translation (1870), and Burnell’s reading and lithograph in Elements of South-Indian Palaeography (2nd ed., 1878), Plate XXVII.⁴⁵

Fleet, “Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings” (1891), p. 96 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Fleet, “Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings” (1891), p. 3 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
Fleet, “Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings” (1891), p. 10 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
J. F. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. 193: Chipurupalle Copper-Plate Grant of Vishnuvardhana I”, Indian Antiquary XX (1891), p. 15 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹
A. C. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography (2nd ed., 1878), p. 23 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
Francis, Vizagapatam (1907), p. 243 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Fleet, “Chipurupalle Copper-Plate Grant of Vishnuvardhana I” (1891), p. 17, text, translation and note 8 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴
Fleet, “Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts” (1896), p. 352 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Fleet, “Chipurupalle Copper-Plate Grant of Vishnuvardhana I” (1891), p. 16 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
W. Francis, Madras District Gazetteers: Vizagapatam (1907), p. 26 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Fleet, “Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings” (1891), p. 4 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
Fleet, “Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings” (1891), p. 11 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
F. Kielhorn, “A List of Inscriptions of Southern India”, appendix to Epigraphia Indica VII (1902–03), p. 93, No. 548 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
V. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency, Vol. III (1919), p. 1667, Vizagapatam district, Chipurupalle No. 16 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩
Robert Sewell and S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar, The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (1932), p. 23 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²
J. F. Fleet, “The Chronology of the Eastern Chalukya Kings”, Indian Antiquary XX (1891), p. 14 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩²