The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s13.20

c8.s13.20

noting "the caste of aboriginal Telugu farmers," or as being a title annexed to the proper names of members of that caste, and also as meaning "the head man of a village." Unless, however, the Guntûr grant of Attivarman,¹ is a Râshtrakûta record, the earliest traces of the Râshtrakûtas are obtained from Central India and the more northern parts of the Bombay Presidency, where, now at all events, the Reddi caste does not seem to exist. And this fact appears rather to indicate that the full name Râshtrakûta is either the origin, or a Sanskritised form, of Rahtôr or Rahtôd; and so to connect the Râshtrakûtas with Râjputâna and the Kanauj country in the North-West Provinces, which seem to have been the original habitats of the Rahtôr clan of Râjputs. On this view, "Ratta" would be an abbreviation of "Râshtrakûta," rather than "Râshtrakûta," an amplified form of "Ratta;" and it may be noted that "Râshtrakûta" is the name that is met with in the earliest documents,—for instance, in the grant of Abhimanyu, the Multâi grant of Nandarâja, and the Sâmângad grant of Dantidurga: the cases in which the name "Ratta" appears in the records of the Râshtrakûtas, distinctively so-called, are very few; and it was specially affected only by the Ratta chieftains of Saundatti,³ who did not use the name Râshtrakûta except in metrical passages that aim at grandiloquence. It may also be remarked that the Râshtrakûtas had the hereditary title of "lord of the town of Lattalûr or Lattanûr,"⁴ indicative of the place from which they originally started: this place has never yet been identified;⁵ but, if any representative of it still exists, it may not impossibly be found in Ratanpur in the Bilâspur District, Central Provinces; and this identification would be another point in favour of the Râshtrakûtas being of northern and Âryan origin. And finally, as another possible way of accounting for the name, it may be remarked that in early times there was a class of officials named Râshtrakûta, which title seems to have designated