The Rashtrakutas and their Times c14.9

c14.9

It is not to be supposed that the above conclusions about the dimensions of the units referred to, hold good universally. The use of the terms used to denote territorial divisions differed from province to province and age to age. Thus *bhukti*, which was a sub-division of a *vishaya* in the Deccan and Kathiawar, was used to denote a territorial unit larger even than a *maṇḍala* in the contemporary Gurjara-Pratīhāra empire of the north, as is clear from the Dighva-Duboli grant of Mahendrapāla.⁴ The term denoting a territorial division corresponding to a modern district, current in Kathiawar, was *āhāra* or *āharaṇi* and not *vishaya*, as was the case in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa empire. The fact that the Wani-Dindori plates should refer to Nasik as a *deśa* and the Dhulia plates of Karkka Pratāpaśila, issued 29 years earlier, should describe it as a *vishaya* shows that these terms were sometimes used even in official documents with a certain amount of looseness. The fact that Karhāṭaka is called a *vishaya* both in 768 A.D. when it comprised 10,000 villages and hamlets and in 1054 A.D. when it consisted of only 4,000, shows that the old nomenclature continued even when the units in question had changed in extent. The conclusions above mentioned are, therefore, only of a general nature.