t 138 ] 



IT. 



THE GANGA KINGS. 



The inscription of which a facsimile is appended, with a 

 transcript and translation, was obtained at Hosoor, about 50 

 miles north of Bangalore. It is the record of a grant made in 

 the Saka year 685 (A.D. 763) by the Ganga king Prithuvi 

 Kongani of certain lands in Sripura, situated near Gudalur; 

 and contains a complete genealogy of the former kings of the 

 line. The plates are in good preservation, and secured on 

 a metal ring bearing the Ganga crest of an elephant on the 

 seal. The characters in which the grant is inscribed are 

 Hale Kannada : the language is Sanskrit. 



The Ganga kingdom may be described, generally, as having 

 extended over all the region drained by the Kaveri and its 

 tributaries, with the exception of the delta of Tan j ore : that 

 is to say, over the south of Mysore and Coorg, with Salem, 

 Coimbatore, the Nilgiri and parts of Malabar. Their terri- 

 tory in Mysore was called the Gangavadi Ninety-six Thousand, 

 as containing, perhaps, 96 nads ; while their territory in 

 Coimbatore and Salem was called the Kongu desa. Down 

 to the middle of the 3rd century their capital was at Skanda- 

 pura, which Lassen has placed at Gajalhatti : it was then 

 removed to Talakadu on the Kaveri. 



These kings have been supposed to be identical with the 

 Chera kings mentioned in the earliest traditions of the south, 

 but none of their grants, of which I have succeeded in 

 discovering several, contains any reference to the Cheras. 

 From an old chronicle we learn that the Gangas were preceded 

 in the government of Kongu by seven kings of the Eatta 

 family, but no memorial of these has yet come to light. The 

 last of them, Sri Yikrama or Tiru Yikrama, abandoned the 



