Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/279

Rh erroneous. When Basava came to Kalyān, Bijjala was in power, and his arrival must therefore have been subsequent to 1156 A. D. If the date of birth be accepted as 1106, Basava would have been a man of fifty years of age or more when summoned to office by Bijjala. The latter resigned in favour of his son in 1167, and may have been assassinated shortly afterwards. On the other hand, Baladēva could not have been Bijjala's minister when he came to Basava's upanāyanam ceremony, for this event occurred in 1114, long before the commencement of Bijjala's reign. There is no reason, however, for crediting the Purāna with any great historical accuracy, and, in fact, the evidence now coming to light from inscriptions, which the industry of archaeologists is giving to the world, throws great doubt upon the traditional narrative.

An inscription on stone tablets which have now been built into the wall of a modern temple at Managoli, a village in the Bijāpur district of the Bombay Presidency about eleven miles to the north-west of Bāgevādi, the supposed birth place of Basava, contains a record of the time of the Kalachuri king, Bijjala. Two dates are given in the inscription, and from one of them it is calculated with certainty that Bijjala's reign began in 1156 A.D. The record gives a certain date as "the sixth of the years of the glorious Kalachurya Bijjaladēva, an emperor by the strength of his arm, the sole hero of the three worlds." The corresponding English date is Tuesday, 12th September, 1161 A.D., so that Bijjala must have come into power, by the strength of his arm, in 1156. But a still more important piece of information is furnished by the mention of a certain Basava or Basavarasayya as the builder of the temple, in which the inscription was first placed, and of one Madirāja, who held the post of