Indian Epigraphy c16.s8.7

c16.s8.7

There are many words of Dravidian origin used in the Sanskrit inscriptions. An interesting word of this category is *pukkoli*, *pukkūli* or *pukkolli* found in certain Sanskrit inscriptions from the Kannaḍa-speaking area in expressions like *pukkoli-kṣetra* or *pukkoli-khajjana*. The word *khajjana*, also spelt *khajjaṇa*, *khajjāna*, *khajjaṇaka*, etc., is the same as Marāṭhī *khājaṇ*. It is a Sanskritised Deśī word meaning ‘the area [near the sea-shore], on which a thin layer of sand accumulates after the ebb-tide coming through inlets’ and ‘a rice field created out of such an area near a hillock by erecting embankments on the three other sides’, or ‘a field created by reclamation of the river-bed’.³ We were formerly inclined to regard the word *pukkoli*, *pukkūli* or *pukkolli* as derived from *poṅkalu* found in records of the Telugu-speaking area in the sense of Telugu *pokalu* meaning arecanuts⁴ and *pukkoli-kṣetra* as a piece of land having an arecanut plantation on it.⁵ It would then be the same as *guvāka-vāstu-bhū* or *kalana*, a Bengali word not found in Bengali lexicons, but mentioned in the Vaṅgīya Sāhitya Pariṣad plate⁶ of Viśvarūpasena of Bengal. A recently published inscription however suggests that *pukkoli* and its variants mean ‘land inundated by floods [of the ebb-tide]’. It would thus mean a kind of field similar to *khajjana*.