History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c34.s6.67

v3.c34.s6.67

The third peculiar thing is that the names of these ministers always end in the termination Aiya which has led scholars to believe that these Śilāhāras, come from Tagara, were people from the Āndhra country and brought with the kings or that they always employed ministers from the Āndhra country where names usually end in Aiya. Now we do not believe that Tagara was in the Āndhra country, on the contrary, we have already said that it was in the heart of Mahārāṣṭra. But even if it were so, the Śilāhāras had been settled for so many centuries in Mahārāṣṭra, particularly in Konkan, that they were every inch Marathas, by relationship, by sympathies and by language. It is, therefore, unbelievable that their sympathies in 1000-1200 A. D. could have lain with the people of Āndhra who were entirely different in manners, in marriage relations and in language. We do not, therefore, think that the ministers could have been people from Āndhra. Nor can it be believed that officers from Karṇāta must have been employed as the Śilāhāras were subordinate to the Rāṣṭrakūṭas of Malkhed who were practically kings of Karaṇātaka though they were Marathas. For we think that the termination “Aiya” is peculiar to Āndhra only, not Karṇātaka. We do not find in Rāṣṭrakūṭa or later Chālukya records names of donees or others ending in Aiya. The riddle, to our mind, is however thus solved. In this tract of the country on the westcoast, as in Āndhra on the east coast, it was usual to designate higher people as Ārya of which "Aiya" is plainly the Prakrit. The Konkan is generally inhabited by non-Aryan Koli population and these lower people always addressed the superior people of Āryan descent who came to the country later and who both subjected and civilized it, as 'Āryas'. In Ptolemy's geography this part of the country is particularly called Ariake; the cultivating population, being non-Aryan. In the country above the ghats it is mixed Aryan or Maratha and hence there did not arise the practice of addressing the higher caste people as "Aiya", as we see in Āndhra where the cultivating population was and is non-Aryan still. We may give our own evidence on this point and state that we have heard even in these days a Konkan Koli villager address a clerk of higher caste as "Ajjā". This word of address was simply astonishing as it revealed the old practice still alive of addressing higher caste poeple as Ārya. The names which end in Aiya are not always of Brahmins; for in the Kharepatan grant we have Mahādevaiya Prabhu and Śri Somanaiya Prabhu. The Prabhus are apparently the ancestors of the modern Kāyastha Prabhus of Konkan as also Ananta Pai Prabhu mentioned in Aparāditya's grant dated 1187 (B. B. R. A. S. XII p. 333). Brahmin names sometimes also end in Bhatta while Kshatriya names are sometimes distinguished by the epithet Bhata and Rāula.