Inscription Stones of Bengaluru: Chapter 3. A Hero Rescued from Ruin

追加: 2026-05-19

[00:00:04][music] [music] >> So, the first visit to Hebbal by me was on the 15th of August, Independence Day, 2017.

[00:00:24]Hebbal had four inscription stones documented. Very interestingly, two were in Kannada, one was in Tamil, one was in uh an 8th-century inscription uh claiming Bhuta Sandra close to Hebbal.

[00:00:36]So, I could find only one of those inscriptions. I could not find the other other three there. So, this one that I had found, actually it was a group it was a group of four stones together in a ditch and the you know at the entrance to Hebbal village. While the stone was secure, people were not still celebrating with the contents.

[00:00:55]So, when I said, "Can we move this stone or lift it up from here?" uh local people were very reluctant. They said, "No, no, we pray to this. This stone has been sitting here for many many generations. It must sit there. We shouldn't We don't touch it even."

[00:01:08]I said, "But look, you know, this is such a dirty place." They said, "It's okay. We clean it up on Jan 14th before we celebrate." Uh this boy noticed that, you know, they would go and they were going to concrete the the ditch and uh he realized that was not a good thing to do. So, these boys came over and try to convince the this one that, "Look, we'll take it out uh take the travel out and you know, we'll extract the stone and then we'll reinstall it again after the at a higher level you have to do the concreting."

[00:01:36]Which the uh villagers agreed to and that's what they did. But when they extracted the hero stone, the bottom of it they described writing.

[00:01:43]The boys who discovered it were super excited and they called me up and said, "Sir, there is this inscription that you are looking for." In the same time, they also reached out to epigraphist friend here by name Dr. P.V. Krishnamurthy.

[00:01:55]I don't know I'm going to WhatsApp you and then I'm going to call you.

[00:02:03]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> This seems to be something written on the stone, but it's not very, very clear. What I can do is the magic of digital power is I can shine a light as if like say touch light from the sides and some of the characters show better now. So, the first line essentially says, you know, Swasti Sri Sri Purusha Maharaja Prithvi Rajyam Gaye.

[00:03:42]Essentially meaning that at the time when Sri Purusha Maharaja was ruling the earth. And the very interesting word that follows here is Perbolal Nadu.

[00:03:52]Okay, Perbola essentially is the earlier name or the name at that time for Hebbal. Now, very interestingly, Perbola has over time morphed from Perbola to Pebbol to Pebbal to Hebbal. By the way, Perbola Nadu essentially indicates that it was a big administrative unit like a state or a district or something like that. Muhatu means there were 30 entities which were like, you know, subdivisions of that. It could have been taluks, it could have been towns, it could have been villages which formed that Nadu.

[00:04:22]The hero that we are talking about here, you'll see his name spelled out and this is a name so easy to read even, you know, children who know Kannada can read this. This is Ki ta ta ga ta va tu ndia Kittayya.

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