The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s10.142

c8.s10.142

¹ In defining the limits of the Kanarese language, Sir Walter Elliot said (*Jour. R. As. Soc.*, F. S., Vol. IV. p. 3; and *Madras Jour. of Lit. and Science*, Vol. VII. p. 195) that "the boundary of the Kanarese tongue on the west and north may be designated by a line drawn from Sadâshivagad" (Kârwâr), "on the Malabâr coast, to the westward of Dhârwâr, Belgaum, and Hukkêri, through Kâgal and Kurundwâd, passing between Kelgaon and Paudegaon, through Brahmapurî on the Bhîma, and Sholâpur, and thence east, to the neighbourhood of Bidar." This, however, wrongly excludes Kolhâpur. — Bidar, in the Nizâm's Dominions, is about fifty miles east of Kalyâni, and about sixty miles to the north by east of Mâlkhêd. As regards Sholâpur, which now counts officially as a Marâthî district, Kanarese is still, to a great extent, the vernacular in the south-east corner of it. And there are Kanarese inscriptions of the Western Châlukya, Kalachurya, and Dêvagiri-Yâdava kings, of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and some later ones, at Sholâpur itself, and at Kûdal and Môhol in that district, and at Karajgî, Kûdal, and Tadwal in the Akalkôt State. — In official language, three out of the four recognised Kanarese districts of this Presidency, viz. the Belgaum, Bijâpur, and Dhârwâr Collectorates are, together with the Kolhâpur, Miraj, and other Native States, always called the "Southern Marâthâ Country." A more misleading appellation, however it originated, could not well have been devised. It is true that, in one of the earliest inscriptions, of Pulikêsin II., this part of the country is included in what was known then, and even many centuries before his time, as Mahârâshtra. But this term, meaning literally "the great country," does not inherently imply any of the racial and linguistic peculiarities which are now naturally attached to the terms Marâthâ and Marâthî, derived from it. In the whole area of the so-called Southern Marâthâ Country, not a single Marâthî inscription has been discovered, of a greater age than two or three centuries. With the exception that two Prâkrit records have been obtained at Banawâsi in North Kanara and 'Malavali' in Mysore, and that a few Prâkrit words occur here and there in other records, the inscriptions are all either in pure Sanskrit or pure Kanarese, or in the two languages combined. This fact speaks of itself, as to what the vernacular of the country was in early times. In the present day, the people and the language of the British districts are essentially Kanarese; and the Kanarese people and language have been displaced, to a certain extent, by the Marâthî people and language in the Native States, only because those States were established by the aggressions of Marâthâs from