著者

三田 昌彦 MITA Masahiko

出版者

名古屋大学文学部

雑誌

名古屋大学文学部研究論集. 史学 (ISSN:04694716)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.57, pp.87-107, 2011-03-31

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This paper follows my previous research which enquires into political meaning of the issue of charters in thePratīhāra empire by analyzing textual forms of copper-plate documents, and, in the same manner, analyzes forms of copper-plates of the Caulukyas of Gujarat (from the late 10th century to the beginning of the 14th century),which was one of the successive states of the Pratīhāras. But here, I omit the charters issued by the sāmantas (i.e. subordinate rulers) from my analysis, and exclusively deal with the problem of the charters of the overlord issue, revealing changes of the forms of royal charters as the Caulukya state being advanced. The problem of the sāmanta charters and their issue system will be discussed in the next paper, now being prepared, which will clarify the historical changing processes of the sāmanta system from the Pratīhāra empire to its successor state in Gujarat.From our diplomatic analyses of the forms of the overlord charters of the Caulukyas, the following points are clarified: 1) In the early phase of the Caulukya rule, textual forms of royal grant charters were not fixed, in which mode of genealogy, place of date and other factors composing documents are varied each other even in the charters composed by the same writer. However, in the beginning of the 12th century, that is, the starting point of their highest phase (the periods of Jayasiṃha and Kumārapāla), a regular form was created, and, since then, the royal charters had been completely fixed in its form. Such regularization of mode of charters followed the introduction of the office of documents, ākşapaţalika, in the end of the 11th century, meaning the result of a sort of systematization of the document administration under the reigns of Kaṃa I and Jayasiṃha.2) While the above process being progressed, we find a distinctive mode of forms consistent through all the charters issued by the Caulukya overlords. That is the form in which a donor, an informer, and an issuer should be identical and be King. This was a standard form of royal grants which was adopted by most of the overlords in early medieval India, agreeing with codes of legal texts (dharmaśāstras) which prescribe that land grant and issue of its charter be allowed only to King. This mode of overlord charters forms a marked contrast to that of sāmanta ones, which break the regular form of <donor = informer = issuer>. The historical meaning of such solecistic forms will be discussed in the forthcoming paper.