THE KURTAKOTI GRANT: THE EARLIEST KNOWN INDIAN RECORD OF A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE.

Total solar eclipses occur nearly every 18 months at some place on the Earth but for any given location, it is a rarest of the rare events. In our quest for the records of solar eclipses in Indian inscriptions, chronicles and literature since Antiquity until the close of the nineteenth century, we have come across only very few references where the eclipse is stated as total. In this paper we focus on one such reference, the so-called Kurtakoti Plates from Karnataka, where there is a Grant made on the occasion of a total eclipse of the Sun. The Grant was attributed to the seventh century Chalukyan king Vikramaditya I. Being a copper plate Grant, doubts were raised over its genuineness. The Kurtakoti copper plates may be a later reproduction of the original plates, which may have been damaged or lost. We find that there indeed was a total solar eclipse over Kurtakoti, on 21 April 627 CE, that can fit the Grant. However, it occurred in the times of the King's father, the great Chalukyan King Pulikesi II with whom the details as given in the Grant are more consistent. This eclipse is an independent corroboration of his date of ascension being 610-611 CE. There is no known Indian historical record mentioning an eclipse of the Sun as total but datable still earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]