The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s11.136

c8.s11.136

early references to them are probably to be found in the grant from the Khândêsh District, of the Mahârâja Rudradâsa, which is perhaps dated in the year 118 of an unspecified era;¹ in the grant from the Surat District, issued from the victorious camp at a place named Âmrakâ, of the Traikûtaka Mahârâja Dahrasêna, dated in the year 207 of an unspecified era;² and in the grant from Kanheri, near Bombay, which is dated in the year 245 of the augmenting sovereignty of the Traikûtakas:³ if these dates are to be referred to the Kalachuri era, the results, taking the years as expired, are A. D. 367-68, 456-57, and 494-95. Now, the name Traikûtaka is obviously derived from a place called Trikûta. Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji has told us that a place named Trikûta is mentioned in the Râmâyana and the Raghuvamśa, as a town of importance in Aparânta or the country along the Western coast, i. e. the Konkan.⁴ And the theory propounded by him is as follows:⁵ In the early centuries A. D., there were certain kings in Western India, holding Gujarât and the adjacent provinces, whom he has called the Western Kshatrapas, and who, he considered, used the Saka era. Certain coins shew that their rule was once interrupted by an invader, who assumed the titles Râja and Kshatrapa, and established another era. This invader was a certain Îśvaradatta, whose coins are dated, not in an already existing era, but in the first and second years of his reign. He belonged to a dynasty of the Abhîra caste, of which records are found in the Nâsik caves, and which probably came by sea from Sindh, conquered the western coast, and made Trikûta its capital. He probably attacked, and gained a victory over, the Kshatrapas. When he had consolidated his power, he began to issue his own coins, copying the Kshatrapa coinage of the district. His coins particularly resemble those of the Kshatrapa Vîradâman and his brother Vijayasêna. The coins shew that the reign of the latter ended in the year 170 of the era used by the Kshatrapas, i. e. in Saka-Samvat 170 (expired), = A. D. 248-49. Îśvaradatta's conquest thus falls at just about the same time with the foundation of the Kalachuri era, of which the first current year was A. D. 249-50.⁶ And we may thus conclude that Îśvaradatta was the founder of an era, which was first known as the Traikûtaka era,⁷ and only in later times came to be called the Kalachuri or Chêdi era. As regards subsequent events, the Pandit held that Vîradâman's son Rudrasêna restored the Western Kshatrapa power, and drove the invaders out of the country; that the Traikûtakas then retired to Central India, and there assumed the names Haihaya and Kalachuri; that afterwards, when the Kshatrapa power was finally destroyed, at the end of the reign of Rudrasêna, son of Rudradâman, the Traikûtakas regained possession of their former capital, Trikûta; and that it was just about this time that Dahrasêna, for whom we have the date of the year 207 (expired), A. D. 249-50, = A. D. 456-57, succeeded to the sovereignty.¹ All this appears extremely probable. It is built up, largely, on the fact that, though the Western Chalukya kings of the main line of Bâdâmi used the Saka era, the local era of the country extending from probably the Damangangâ on the south to the Mahî on the north was the Kalachuri era, which we meet with in records of the seventh and eighth centuries, not only in the Gurjara territory in the northern part of that stretch of country, but even in the Lâta province of the Chalukyas in the southern part of it. But this fact itself proves that, at some time or other, the early kings of the Kalachuri dynasty had the sovereignty over the stretch of country in question. And the Pandit’s theory adapts itself so well to all the circumstances that have to be accounted for, that it may be accepted as furnishing in all probability the true explanation of them.