Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c14.3

c14.3

THE identification or location of the ancient Śilāhāra capital, Purī, presents some difficulty owing to the few and mengre references to it in old inscriptions. In the earliest mention of the city, in a copper-plate grant of A.D. 584, and the stone inscription on the ancient temple of Meguṭi at Aihole of A.D. 634,¹ we are told that Daṇḍadaṇḍa, the general of Pulikeśi II, conquered the Mauryas of the Koṅkaṇ and attacked the city of Purī—the Lakshmī or Goddess of the Fortunes of the Western Ocean, and presumably their capital—with hundreds of ships.² A later mention of Purī is found in an inscription in cave 78 at Kanheri, of the reign of the Rāshṭrakūṭa king Amoghavarsha, dated in A.D. 843-44, which records that his feudatory, the Mahāsāmanta, Pullaśakti, of the northern branch of the Śilāhāras, was then governing the whole Koṅkaṇ, "headed by the city of Purī," which he held through the favour of his suzerain lord.³ There is no reason to doubt that the Purī of the Maurya period was the same as that of the Śilāhāras (A. D. 843-1187). In these it is stated that Purī was the chief city of a district of 1,400 villages.