The Rashtrakutas and their Times c7.s1.97

c7.s1.97

We can now take up the question as to whether the Rāṣṭrakūṭas of Malkhed originally belonged to Mahārāṣṭra or Karṇatak. We have shown already how the main line, that was later established at Malkhed, has to be connected with the Rāṣṭrakūṭa family ruling at Elichpur. But Dantidurga and his ancestors were not natives of Berar. Canarese was their mother-tongue. It was Canarese and not Mahārāṣṭrī literature that flourished at their court.⁴⁵ Amoghavarsha I of the line was either himself the author, or at least the inspirer, of the oldest Canarese work on poetics. The sign-manuals of Karka and Dhruva of the Gujrat branch of the house in the Naosāri plates of 816 A.D.⁴⁶ and the Baroda grants of 812⁴⁷ and 835⁴⁸ A.D. are in the south-Indian proto-Canarese characters, whereas the records themselves are to be seen inscribed in the usual script of the locality of the period in question. If the home of the Malkhed Rāṣṭrakūṭas were in Mahārāṣṭra, it is difficult to explain how they could be using the script of Karṇatak as their mother script. It is true that much earlier than 812 A.D. the Rāṣṭrakūṭa empire had embraced the whole of Karṇatak, but if the family had originally belonged to Mahārāṣṭra, its members deputed to rule over southern Gujrat could not be seen using for their sign-manual a script that was current neither in southern Gujrat, nor in Mahārāṣṭra but in Karṇatak. The fact that the recently published Jura inscription of Kṛṣṇa III, found in Bundelkhand, should be using the Canarese language to describe his achievements can also be explained only on the assumption that Canarese was the mother tongue of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas of Malkhed.