Early History of the Dekkan down to the Mahomedan Conquest c8.5

c8.5

Dakshiṇâpatha or Dakshiṇa was the name of the whole peninsula to the south of the Narmadâ Among the countries enumerated in the Mârkaṇḍeya,³ Vâyu,⁴ and Mâtsya⁵ Purâṇas as comprised in Dakshiṇâpatna are those of the Cholas, Pâṇḍyas, and Keralas, which were situated in the extreme south of the peninsula, and correspond to the modern provinces of Tanjor, Madura, and Malabâr In the Mahâbhârata, however, Sahadeva, the youngest of the Pâṇḍu princes, is represented in his career of conquest to have gone to Dakshiṇâpatha after having conquered the king of the Pâṇḍyas ⁶ This would show that the country of the Pâṇḍyas was not included in Dakshiṇâpatha Again, the rivers Godâvarî and others springing from the Sahyâdri are spoken of in the Vâyu Purâna as rivers of Dakshiṇâpatha,⁷ while the Narmadâ and the Tâpî are not so styled, whence it would seem that the valleys of those rivers were not included in Dakshiṇâpatha The word thus appears not to have been always used in the same sense In modern times it is the name of the country between the Narmadâ on the north and a variable line along the course of the Krishnâ to the south, exclusive of the provinces lying to the extreme east It is thus almost identical [2] with the country called Mahârâshṭra or the region in which the Marâṭhî language is spoken, the narrow strip of land between the Western Ghâṭs and the sea being excluded A still narrower definition is that which excludes from this tract the valleys of the Narmadâ and the Tâpî, and to this extent we have seen that there is authority for it in the Vâyu Purâna Thus the word Dehkan expresses the country watered by the upper Godâvarî and that lying between that river and the Krishnâ The name Mahârâshṭra also seems at one time to have been restricted to this tract For that country is, in the Purâṇas⁸ and other works, distinguished on the one hand from Aparânta or Northern Konkan, and from the regions on either side of the Narmadâ and the Tâpî inhabited by the Pulindas and Śabaras, as well as from Vidarbha on the other In a comparatively modern work entitled Ratnakosa,⁹ Mahârâshṭra, Vaidarbha, Tâpî-taṭa-deśa and Narmadâ-taṭa-desa (*i c*, the countries on either side of those rivers), and the Konkan are spoken of as distinct from each other The Dekkan or Mahârâshṭra in this the narrowest sense of the word forms the subject of the present notice