Hero stone of Gaṇḍamaykali

Editor: Jens Thomas.

Identifier: DHARMA_INSTelugu00083.

Language: Telugu.

Repository: Telugu Inscriptions (tfb-telugu-epigraphy).

Version: (585a60b), last modified (ec27c2b).

Edition

⟨1⟩ svasti śrī gaṇḍamaykali⟨2⟩yya maganṟu [ca. 1*] cuḻpa(ti) ⟨3⟩ maganṟu goccicōpatiya ⟨4⟩ kayambuna poḍicci viṟu⟨5⟩ga[mba]di paḍi Intralō⟨6⟩kaṁb ēge

Apparatus

⟨3⟩ goccicōpatiya ⬦ goccicopatiya ?.

⟨4⟩ viṟu⟨5⟩ga[mba]ḍi ⬦ viṟu⟨5⟩ga[ca. 2*](hi) ?.

Translation by Sastri 1969

Hail! The son of cuḻpati, (who is) the son of Sri Gaṇḍamaykaliyya (Gandamalikavya ?) fought in the battle of Goccicopatia ...fell and went to the world of Indra.

Translation by Jens Thomas

Svasti! (X)cuḻpati, the hero (maganṟu), the son (maganṟu) of Śrī Gaṇḍamaykali, got in close combat in the battle of Goccicōpati, was defeated, fell and went to Indra’s world.

Commentary

The text mostly follows the edition of J. Ramayya Pantulu in 1948, p. 337, № 621 in absence of a picture. Changes have been made due to grammatical or lexical necessity or probability. The dots used in the edition to indicate lost or unintelligible characters can not clearly be attributed to a certain quantity of characters (one dot may indicate one or more lost or unintelligible characters). I regard the ending -yya and -ya to be a Kannaḍa (or Kannaḍa-like) genitive suffix as is the regular form of a word ending in -i. In several Old Telugu inscriptions not only phonological resemblence of Kannaḍa and Tamiḻ forms (like anlauting s- instead of c-) can be found but also Kannaḍa morphology (or rather what appears as such) is sometimes met with. Since this suffix is absent in (X)cuḻpati, I regard this to be the hero’s name that otherwise would strangely enough not have been mentioned in the inscription. Radha Krishna (1971, p. 298) interprets -iyya as comming from -ayya but that only holds good for the proper noun but is not to be expected on the place name. On the other hand both forms could be instances of the so-called emphatic particle that probably had the shape -a in Old Telugu (Sastri 1969, p. 260). The term maganṟu is attested with several meanings amongst which is ’son’ in Old Telugu (as is probably in the first instance of this inscription, while some of the other meanings would fit as well), ’husband’, ’man’, ’hero’ (see e. g. Sītārāmācāryulu 1922, p. 597 under the head word magan̆ḍu). Etymologically, the term consists of the element maga- "male" (as attested in certain compounds) and the masculine ending -nṟu, wherefore the meanings mentioned above probably result from an original ’the male/masculine one’. The name of the place where the battle took place probably has to be read goccicōpati because kocci appears as a place name elsewhere (Nilakanta Sastri and Venkataramayya [1956] 1947–1948, pp. 229–230, № 42 D) and is later attested in the meaning ’place’. In line 5 Ramayya Pantulu’s reading ‹hi›, while perhaps being the closest to the actual representation on the stone, has to be emended into the very similar ‹pi› since 1) only few words can end in -hi and 2) we get the well-fitting converb viṟugambaḍi ’being defeated’.

Bibliography

The inscription was noted in A. R. No. 374 of 1904 and first published by J. Ramayya Pantulu in 1948, p. 337, № 621 with few metadata and without translation. K. M. Sastry 1969, p. 336 provides a translation while relying on J. Ramayya Pantulu’s edition.

Secondary

Ramayya Pantulu, J. 1948. South-Indian inscriptions (texts). Volume X: Telugu inscriptions from the Madras Presidency. South Indian Inscriptions 10. Delhi: Manager of Publications. Page 337, item 621.

Sastri, Korada Mahadeva. 1969. Historical grammar of Telugu with special reference to Old Telugu c. 200 B.C. - 1000 A.D. Anantapur: Sri Vekateswara Univ. Page 336, item 75.