The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s1.3

v1.c6.s1.3

From early times the name has been used in different senses. In its broadest application it comprises the whole of India between the southern sea and the Vindhyas—*dakṣiṇasya samudrasya tathā Vindhyasya chāntare*. This connotation is known to the *Bharata Nāṭya Śāstra*¹ and the *Bhuvanakosha* of the *Purāṇas*. The *Matsya Purāṇa*² carried the northern limit to Kāruṣa which occupied the hill country enclosing the Kaimur spur of the eastern Vindhyas. The Pāli *Jatakas* stretch it to Avanti close to the western Vindhyas, while the *Petavatthu* commentary includes within the Deccan the Damiḷa-viṣaya or Tamil country in the far south.³ Harishena, the panegyrist of Samudra Gupta, includes within Dakṣiṇāpatha all the territory from the Mahānadi valley to Kāñchi. The uncertainty regarding the location of Mahākāntāra which he enumerates among territories in the south makes it difficult to determine the exact northern limit of the Deccan as understood by him. The *Kāvya-mīmāṃsā* of Rājaśekhara places Dakṣiṇāpatha beyond Māhishmati and the Narmadā. The definition of the term in the later Chālukya records—setu Narmadā madhyam... Dakshiṇāpatham, ‘from Adam’s Bridge to the Nerbudda stretches the Deccan’—is not fundamentally different.