The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s11.36.2

c8.s11.36.2

the Malabâr and South Kanara Districts in the Madras Presidency, really were reckoned among the Seven Koṅkaṇs. And the verse appears to preserve a reminiscence of another of them, in the name Havyaga. But, otherwise, these two enumerations seem very imaginative. Epigraphic records shew that the Payve, Hayve, or Haive five-hundred, corresponding probably to the North Kanara District, in Bombay, was one of the seven divisions; thus, a record of A. D. 1112 at Baḷagâmve in Mysore, giving the myth about the formation of the Koṅkaṇ (which seems to embody the reminiscence of an actual upheaval that occurred within the memory of the present race of mankind), and aiming at also giving the etymology of the word, tells us that Paraśurâma, the son of Jamadagni and Rêṇukâ, having twenty-one times slain all the kings of the earth, i.e. the Kshatriyas, gave the whole earth to the Brâhmaṇs, up to the shores of the ocean; that then, considering that he himself should not dwell in the possessions of the Brâhmaṇs, he pushed back the ocean with the tip of his bow, and, when the western ocean would not give him even such a trifle as a drop (kaṇa) of water for his support, he took it by force, and, at the place where he took it, acquired, by a boon of the god Śiva (Phanipa-kaṅkaṇa-varade; the reference is to Śiva as wearing a hooded serpent as a bracelet), the Seven Koṅkaṇs as his place of abode;