The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s11.16

c8.s11.16

in the Vana-Parvan or third book of the Mahābhārata. Thus, an inscription of A. D. 1035 at Baḷagāmve, eighteen miles to the south-east of Banawāsi, says that, after the celebration of the rājasūya-sacrifice, "the five Pāṇḍavas came to Baḷigāve and established there five liṅgas" (P. S. and O.-C. Inscr. No. 155, and Mysore Inscriptions, p. 146). And the town of Hāngal, sixteen miles to the north-east of Banawāsi, is called in inscriptions by names which represent it as the city or fort of Virāṭa (see more fully in chapter VIII. below); and Virāṭa was the king at whose court the Pāṇḍavas spent the thirteenth year of their exile, as related in the Virāṭa-Parvan or fourth book of the Mahābhārata. As regards the identification of Vaijayantī with Banawāsi, there is perhaps no absolute proof; but it is sufficiently established by two points. In the first place, one of the names of Banawāsi was the very similar one of Jayantī; it occurs in many records, and notably in an inscription at Banawāsi itself, at the temple of Madhukēśvara, which records that the stone cot of the god Madhukēśvara was presented "at the town of Jayantī" (Ind. Ant. Vol. IV. p. 207, No. 8); and this same god, which was the family-deity of the Kādambas of Hāngal, is always called in their records "Madhukēśvara of Jayantī" (see chapter VIII. below). And secondly, a Western Chalukya record of A. D. 692, mentions "the district named Edevoḷal, in the north-east quarter in the vicinity of the famous town of Vaijayantī" (Ind. Ant. Vol. XIX. p. 152): other records state that the district in question was in the Banawāsi province (e. g., id. Vol. VII. p. 300), and shew that it included Āḷūr, Araḷēshwar, Bāḷūr, Gejjihalli, Kyāsanūr, and Yeḷawaṭṭi, all within a seven-mile radius of Hāngal; and it is obvious that Banawāsi, the capital of the province, is the town with reference to which, under the name of Vaijayantī, the position of the district is defined in the record of A. D. 692. And thus it can hardly be questioned that Vaijayantī, as well as Jayantī,—the latter of which names seems to be simply an abbreviation of the former,—was a name of Banawāsi. Dr. Bühler, indeed, has quoted the St. Petersburg Dictionary to the effect that Vaijayantī occurs, in both Brāhmaṇical and Jain books, as the name of a town on the coast of the Koṅkaṇ, and has suggested that it is the sea-port Byzanteion of the Greeks (Cave-Temple Inscriptions, p. 28, note 2). And, of course, the similarity of the names is very tempting. But, if this identification is to be accepted, then there must have occurred some mistake similar to that which led Albērūnī to speak of Banawāsi, by this name itself, as being on the sea-coast (Albērūnī's India, Translation, Vol. II. p. 202).