South Indian Inscriptions

SENDRAKAS OF GUJARAT

Sēndrakas ruled over this territory for three generations. They seem to have made numerous grants; for, Pandit Bhagvanlal once informed Dr. Bühler that he had in his possession Several sets of Sēndraka plates from Southern Gujarat.¹ It is very unfortunate that they are not forthcoming now.

Only four grants² of the family have been published so far. Of these, three were made by Allaśakti. The earliest of them was discovered at Kāsārē in West Khandesh. Before its publication it was thought that the rule of the Sēndrakas was confined to Southern Gujarāt. The Kāsārē plates of Allaśakti³ which register his donation of some land in the village Pippalikhēta, modern Pimpalner,⁴ about 45 miles west of Dhulia, clearly show that the Sēndrakas held Khandesh also. The plates are dated in the year 404 of the Kalachuri era ( 653 A. C.). Anothere inscription of Allaśakti was found at Bagumrā⁵ in the Surat District. It is dated in the Kalachuri year 406 (656 A. C.), and registers the grant of the village Balisa, the modern Wanesa in the Bārdoli tālukā of the Surat District.

From these grants we learn that Bhānuśakti, who is called Nikumbha in the Kāsārē Plates, was the founder of the family. As his grandson Allaśakti was ruling in 653 and 656 A.C , Bhānuśakti has to be referred to the first quarter of the seventh century A.C. He seems, therefore, to have been invested by Pulakēśin II with the government of Southern Gujarat and Khandesh after the defeat of the Kalachuri Buddharāja. In his grants he is said to have attained victory in the clash of many battles with the onslaught of four-tusked elephants. His son was Ādityaśakti, and the latter’s son, Allaśakti.⁶ In his grants Allaśakti claims to have won the pañchamāśabda and assumes the birudas Pritihivīvallabha and Nikumbha.

The sēndrakas, though they were raised to power by the Western Chālukyas of Bādāmi, make no mention of their liege lords in their grants. From this Dr. Fleet inferred that the Bagumrā grant ‘belongs to the period when the Western Chālukya sovereignty was in abeyance’.⁷ when Fleet wrote, this inference appeared quite justified; because in other inscriptions of that period such as the Navsāri and Surat plates of Śryāśraya Śīlāditya, the reigning sovereign was invariably mentioned.⁸ Since then several other grants of the period have come to light, e.g. the Nasik plates of Dharāśraya-Jayasimha, the Anjaneri plates of Bhōgaśakti and the Mundakēdē Plates of Allaśakti’s son Jayśakti, in which the reigning suzerain is not specifically mentioned, but which were made after the
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¹ Ind. Ant., Vol. XVII1, p. 267. Pandit Bhagvanlal is known to have bequesthed by his will all his coins and copper-plates to the British Museum (ibid., Vol. XVII, P. 297), but no Sēndraka grant can now be traced there.
²Two of these, viz. the Nāgad plates of Allaśakti and the Mundakhēdē plates of Allaśakti's son Jayaśakti bear dates of the Śaka era, and are, therefore, not included in this Volume. The Nāgad plates dated in Śaka 577 (656A.C.) were issued from Allaśakti's camp near Kāyāvatāra (modern Kārwān in Gujarat) and record his grant of a village near Nāndīpuradvārī (modern Nandurbar in west Khandesh). (N.I.A., VoI. I, pp.747-48). For an account of the Mundakhēdē plates, dated Śaka 602 (681 A.C.), see below, p. lix, n.2.
³No.25.
⁴Some lines originally engraved on the second plate were cancelled and others incised over them. The statement refers to the later record.
⁵No.26.
⁶His name is given as Nikumbhallaśakti by Bühler but that Nikumbba was only a biruda is evident from the seal of the kāsārē plates which has the legend Allaśakti. The same name occurs in 1.17 of the Kāsārē plates. Nikumbha is prefixed as a biruda to the name of Allaśakti's son Jayaśakti also. See his Mundakhēdē plates, A.R.B.I.S.M. for Śaka 1834, pp. 169 ff.
⁷Bom . Gaz., VoI. part ii, p. 361.
⁸Fleet pointed out that no paramount soverign is mentoined in the Kairā plates of Vijayarāja (No. 34) which he referred to the same period. But the record is spurious.