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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s3: Natural Divisions

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s3

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Natural Divisions

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Geographically the country falls into three natural divisions: firstly, an elevated plateau filling the triangular space enclosed by the Sātmāla Hills in the north and the two ranges styled the ghāts in the west and the east that stretch in long lines nearly parallel to the coast and meet in a knot in the Nilgiris; secondly, a narrow strip of territory bounded by the shore of the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghāts and thirdly, a broader expanse of low land between the Bay of Bengal and the Eastern Ghāts.

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The great central upland has an elevation of from 1,000 to 3,000 ft. above the level of the sea with depressions that coincide with the valleys of rivers. It has hills and spurs here and there rising to 2,500 ft., and even to 3,500 ft., and descends by a succession of terraces from the Western Ghāts towards the seaboard of the Presidency of Madras. The plateau is divided into large areas geologically and linguistically distinct. The Godāvarī and its affluent the Mañjrā cut off the trappean region in the north and the west, covered with luxuriant vegetation and largely peopled by Marāṭhās, from the granitic and calcareous country with bare rocks and a sandy soil where Telugus predominate. The south-western part of the plateau with its ‘Dharwarian Rocks’, marked off from Marāṭhwāra by a waving line drawn from Bidar to Kārwār, and from Teliṅgāna by another line running from Bidar to Adoni, constitutes a third area styled Kannaḍa, Karṇāṭa, or Karṇāṭaka where the prevailing language is Kanarese. The name of the region is sometimes derived from the Dravidian words *kār*, ‘black’, and *nāḍu*, ‘country’, that is, the black country, a term that aptly designates the black cotton soil, *kṛiṣṇabhūmikṣetra*, *vikhyāta-kṛiṣṇavarṇa* . . . *viṣaya*, which made this part of the Deccan famous for many ages. The river which watered the land was fittingly termed Kṛiṣṇa, ‘the black’, Kṛiṣṇavarṇā, ‘of black hue’, or Kṛiṣṇaveṇī, ‘with a braid of black hair’.

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The narrow space of lowlands bordering on the Arabian Sea, or Western Ocean as it is called in ancient inscriptions, has a breadth of thirty to sixty miles. It is a rugged country much broken by spurs from the ghāts, intersected by rivulets and indented by creeks and coves. In places it is picturesque, with rocky islets and capes, stretches of palm-fringed sand-beach, rich plots of rice-land, and river-mouths that spread out into broad lake-like estuaries. Ancient harbours and market towns lie scattered along the coast-line. They represented in past ages much of the wealth and strength of India.

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The eastern coast strip is broader than that in the west. The ghāts occasionally throw off spurs which break the seaboard into headlands. The coast-line is on the whole unsheltered and deficient in natural harbours safe for ships of deep draught throughout the year. But it has open roadsteads that afford anchorage. Here, not very far from the mouth of the Kṛiṣṇa, Ptolemy located the point of departure (*Apheterion*) for ships bound for Khryse or Suvarṇabhūmi, the ‘golden lands’ of Trans-Gangetic India and the islands lying scattered in the neighbouring sea. The great rivers of the Deccan, the Godāvarī and the Kṛṣṇā, break through the line of the ghāṭs and form rich deltas which are the granaries of the south (deśam . . . aśesha-sasya-prachura-phala-yutam).

Mountains

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The features of the Deccan are largely determined by its mountain systems. In the west the Western Ghāṭs, one of the seven kulaparvatas, styled Sahyādri by the ancient writers, of which the Sātmāla range in the north, also called Sahyādriparvat, is only a spur, form an almost continuous wall with an elevation of about 4,000 ft. for the greater part of its length. The fortified hill-tops of the Sahyādris played a conspicuous part in the drama of south Indian history. The range is crossed by several passes that serve as the main lines of communication between the tableland behind the ghāṭs and the ports on the western coast.

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The main chain of the Western Ghāṭs throws off a number of spurs that run across the central upland from the west to the east for several miles, and penetrate deep into the interior of the peninsula. They part the great river-basins from one another, and often in ancient times constituted boundary-lines between various janapadas. The most important of these is the belt of hills that separates the valley of the Tapti from that of the Godāvarī and constitutes the northern wall of the Deccan tableland. It derives one of its names, Sahyādriparvat, from the parent range from which it branches off at right angles at a point that lies to the north-west of Nāsik. It is also known as the Chāndor, Sātmāla, Indhyādri, or Ajanta chain. The last name is derived from the famous village in the Bhokardan tāluk of the Aurangābād district, Hyderabad State, which is celebrated for the series of rock-cut Buddhist caves, richly ornamented with fresco paintings, that are regarded as the finest expression of Indian pictorial art during that period. The Ajanta Hills break into isolated peaks and ridges within Yeotmal and lead on to the broad belt of hill and plateau that parts the basin of the Mahānadī from that of the Godāvarī, and finally merges into the Eastern Ghāṭs.

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We have next a spur of the Sahyādris known as the Jālna Hills that extends from the Devagiri or Daulatābād fort to Jālna and then proceeds to Berār. It formed apparently the boundary-line between the ancient janapadas of Bhogavardhana (Bhokardan) and Mūlaka (district round Paiṭhān). It skirts the plateau in one of whose scarps are excavated the famous rock-temples and caves of Ellora.

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A third range, called the Ahmadnagar Hills, of which the Bālāghāṭ chain in the Hyderabad State may be regarded as a continuation, extends from Harischandragaḍh (4,691 ft. above sea-level) on the Sahyādris, to Ahmadnagar and Bhīr and thence to Biloli. It sends off a spur that stretches from Ashti to Gulbarga, forming the watershed between the Godāvarī and the Sīnā, which joins the Bhīmā, the famous northern affluent of the Kṛṣṇa. Pargiter identified it with the Rishyamūka of the Rāmāyaṇa. But this view does not commend itself to all scholars.

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Lastly, we have the Mahādeo Hills which start about ten miles north of Mahābaleshwar and stretch across the whole breadth of the Sātāra District. One of the spurs of this range forms the water-parting between the Kṛṣṇa and its tributary, the Vasnā. To the south of the Mahādeo Hills lay the ancient country of Karahāṭaka, modern Karāḍ, and to its north the famous *vishayas* (districts or *tāluks*) of Pūnaka (Poona) and Paḷayaṭṭhāṇa (Phaḷṭaṇ).

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The series of hills that form the eastern flank of the Deccan plateau and overlook the Bay of Bengal are known as the Eastern Ghāṭs. Under the name of Mahida (Skt. Mahendra) the chain finds mention in the Nāsik eulogy of Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi along with the Sahya (the northern portion of the Western Ghāṭs), Kaṇhagiri (Kṛṣṇagiri), modern Kaṇheri, in the Ṭhāṇa District, and several other hills of the peninsula. It ranks as a *kulaparvata* in the *Purāṇas*, and may be taken to start from Mahendragiri or Mahendrāchala in the Gañjām District and run on to the Kulakkāl Hills, also styled Mahendragiri, in the Tinnevelly District of the Madras Presidency. It does not form an unbroken rampart like the sister range in the west. It is pierced by the Godāvarī, the Kṛṣṇa, and other streams that flow down to the Bay of Bengal. As it runs on to the south in a succession of ranges following the contour of the coast it begins to approach the Sahyādri with which it unites in the knot known as the Nilgiris, the ‘orographical apex’ of the Deccan tableland. The union, however, takes place far beyond the Tuṅgabhadrā-Kṛṣṇa river which marks the southern boundary of our Deccan. Guarding that boundary stand the famous hills of the Raichūr Doāb to which Pargiter applied the name Mālyavat, and other scholars, with greater plausibility, the designation Rishyamūka. But the most famous hill on this frontier lies on the southern side of the Kṛṣṇa, in the Kurnool District of the Madras Presidency. It is the celebrated Śrīśaila mentioned as the southern boundary of the Kākatīya realm of Teliṅgāna in the Hanamkoṇḍa inscription of Rudradeva.

Forests

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The hills and mountains of the Deccan are, especially in the trappean region, often covered with luxuriant vegetation. Primeval forests lie to the east of the Godāvarī. Within the state of Hyderabad vast areas are thickly wooded. It is said of the immense jungle about the Pākhāl Lake in the Waraṅgal District that ‘a squirrel could reach Bhadrāchalam from the neighbourhood of Pākhāl by leaping from tree to tree’. The Malenāḍ, or hill country, near the upper reaches of the Tuṅgabhadrā abounds with ‘giant tree trunks entwined with creepers of pythonic dimensions, whose massive arms are decked with a thousand bright blossoming orchids. Birds of rare plumage flit from bough to bough, bisons and herds of elk browse on rich herbage, and the boom of langur monkeys echoes through the wilds.’ The forests stretching from Bastar along the banks of the Godāvarī to the Seuna country which embraced the Daulatābād area, and part of the Nāsik District, are known from epigraphic records and the Vratakhaṇḍa of Hemādri¹ to be remnants of the famous Daṇḍakāraṇya that covered the face of the valleys of the Godāvarī and the Pampā or the Tuṅgabhadrā in the days of the Rāmāyaṇa. The Cintra Praśasti has a pointed reference to the woodland (vanasthali) on the banks of the Godāvarī. The Tuṅgakāraṇya of the Vana-parva of the Mahābhārata, mentioned after Saptagodāvara,² ‘the seven branches of the Godāvarī’, may have derived its name from the river Tuṅga which rises in the Western Ghāṭs at Gaṅgāmūla in the Varāhaparvata, and unites with the twin stream of the Bhadrā to form the famous Tuṅgabhadrā. In the Sabhāparva of the Great Epic we find mention, in connexion with the southern conquests of Sahadeva, of the Kāntārakas, not far from the banks of the Waingaṅgā (Veṇvātaṭa), probably answering to the Mahākāntāra of the Allahabad Pillar inscription of Samudra Gupta. Bāṇa, writing more than two centuries after the court-poet of Samudra Gupta, refers in his Kādambarī to forests and groves girt by the river Godāvarī, and the lotus lake called Pampā. Yuan Chwang, the Chinese contemporary of Bāṇa, speaks of a jungle infested by troops of murderous highwaymen between the Draviḍa country and Kung-kan-na-pu-lo or Kung-ta-na-pu-lo in the Kanarese area, and a great forest or wilderness, ravaged by wild beasts and harried by bands of robbers, on the way from the last-mentioned country to Mahārāṣṭra. The jungle between Draviḍa and the Kanarese country may be identical with ‘the inaccessible forest stretching to the gates of Śrīparvata’ mentioned in the Taḷagunda inscription of the Kadamba king Kākusthavarman. That between Kung-ta-na-pu-lo and Mahārāṣṭra reminds one of the Mahāṭavi, ‘the great forest’, mentioned by Varāhamihira in his Bṛhat-saṃhitā, between Karṇāṭa and the countries called Chitrakūṭa and Nāsikya (Nāsik).

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¹ Epigraphia Indica, xii, 246; Bhandarkar, EHD, (1928), 247.

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² It may have reference to the ‘seven streams’ of the Godāvarī or to the sapta-Godāvarī pool at Drākshārāma in the Rāmachandrapuram Tāluk of the East Godāvari District. Ep. Ind., xii, 208.

Lakes

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For a territory of the dimensions of the Deccan the number of lakes is not large. Two lakes, namely the Lake of the Five Nymphs (pañchāpsarotaṭaka), associated with Māṇḍakarṇi or Śātakarṇi,³ and the Pampāsaras, apparently the same as Pampāsāgara, the name of which survives in Hampasāgar in the Hūvinahadagalli tāluk, Bellāry District, on the Tuṅgabhadrā, are mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa. A great lake (mahātaras) in Veṅgi-maṇḍala is mentioned in the Chellūr Plates of Kulottuṅga-Choḍa-deva II¹ and apparently also in the Pīthāpuram inscription of Pṛthvīśvara.² Kielhorn identifies it, as well as the jalam Kaunālam,³ ‘the water of Kunāla’, with the well-known Kolleru or Colair Lake between the rivers Godāvarī and Kṛṣṇā. The lagoon known as the Chilkā Lake (Chilkā-samudra)⁴ and that styled Pulicat lie outside the boundaries of our Deccan. But within the boundaries of the Hyderabad State and elsewhere we have a number of pools artificially dammed up for irrigation and water supply. The most important are the Pākhāl and Rāmappā Lakes in the Waraṅgal District, beside a large number of sāgars or tanks of immense size constructed in the time of the Quṭbshāhī kings and their successors belonging to the house of Aṣaf Jāh. The Pākhāl Lake was built by throwing a dam across the Pākhāl river which here cuts its way between two hills. The great sheet of water covers an area of nearly thirteen square miles. From the lake flows the river Muner, possibly the Maudgalya of a Gārla inscription, which flows into the river Kṛṣṇā. The Rāmappā Lake in the Parkāl tāluk of Karimnagar is famous for the temples that adorn its neighbourhood. They are of the same type as the great temple at Hanamkoṇḍa but more profusely sculptured.

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³ Rāmāyaṇa, iii, 11; Raghuvamśa, xiii, 38.

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¹ Indian Antiquary, xiv, 57; Ep. Ind., vi, 3.

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² Ibid., iv, 51.

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³ Ibid., vi, 6.

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⁴ Ibid., v, 56.

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In the Bombay Presidency the kuṇḍs or holy pools in the bed of the Godāvarī near Nāsik do not deserve the name of lakes. We have in Ahmadnagar the Bhātadi lake on a feeder of the Sinā which is itself an affluent of the Bhīmā. In the Sholāpur District we have a number of artificial lakes at Koregāon, Ashti (near Paṇḍharpur), and Ekruk, only five miles from Sholāpur town.

Rivers

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As the Deccan plateau slopes down eastwards to the Madras seaboard from the long flanking wall of the Western Ghāṭs, all the drainage is from the west to the east. The two main lines of drainage are represented by two great river systems, namely the Godāvarī with its sister streams, and the Kṛṣṇā with its confluents.

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The word Godāvarī literally means ‘granting water or kine’. Crooke thinks that the name is probably a sanskritized form of the original Dravidian term ‘goda’ (Telugu gode), ‘limit’, ‘boundary’, in the sense that it divided two regions of Dakṣiṇāpatha,⁵ apparently the region of trap in the north and the granitic and calcareous country in the south.

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⁵ Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vi, 306.

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The river ranks high among the sacred streams of India. The people of the south call it Gaṅgā or Gautamī Gaṅgā and regard it as equal in holiness to the Bhāgīrathī Gaṅgā that flows through Āryāvarta. A Gautamī-māhātmya forms part of the *Brahma-purāṇa* and testifies to its great sanctity. One of its sources springs from a hill behind the holy spot of Trimbak, Skt. *Tryambaka*, named after the god Śiva. It lies in the Nāsik District about fifty miles from the shore of the Arabian Sea. Here is shown the *Gomukha*, ‘cow’s mouth’, where the water drips from a lofty cliff through a stone cow’s mouth. A larger branch takes its rise in the ridge that joins the Trimbak and Brahma mountains. After passing the holy precincts of Trimbak the river cuts a deep rocky bed through the Ghāṭmātha (hill-top) country and leaps into the famous falls of Gaṅgāpur. It then flows past the sacred city of Nāsik—identified with the Pañchavaṭī of epic tradition—through a succession of masonry pools, styled *kuṇḍs*, much used in ceremonial ablutions. It receives several affluents such as the Kādravā (Kadwā) and the Pravarā before it reaches Paiṭhaṇ, ‘the royal seat’ of Pulumāyi in the second century A.D. It then runs right across the state of Hyderabad receiving on its left bank the Pūrṇā, and on the right the Māñjrā, the Vañjarā of the *Brahma* and Vañjulā of the *Matsya* and *Vāyu Purāṇas*, which forms part of the boundary line between the Marāṭha country and the land of the Telugus. Farther on it is joined by the Prānhitā which conveys the united waters of the Peṅgaṅgā, the Wardhā (Varadā), and the Waingaṅgā (Veṇvā). From this point the river takes a marked south-easterly bend dividing the ancient realm of Chakrakūṭa (Bastar) from Andhra or Teliṅgāna of which Anmakoṇḍa (Hanamkoṇḍa) was the ornament (*Andhrāvanimaṇḍana*). About thirty miles below the confluence of the Prānhitā the Godāvarī receives the Indravatī from the Bastar State. It then passes by Bhadrāchalam, sacred to the memory of the hero of the *Rāmāyaṇa*, and is next joined by the Śabarī, which probably takes its name from one of the primitive tribes mentioned as early as the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*. The river now forces its way through the Eastern Ghāṭs and, flowing past Rājahmundry (Rājamahendrapaṭṭaṇa), opens out and forms a series of broad reaches studded with low alluvial islands styled *laṅkās*. The sea is reached by seven branches¹ (*sapta-Godāvarī*) styled the Vāsisṭhī (on the west), Vaiśvāmitrī, Vāmadevī, Gautamī, Bhāradvājī, Ātreyī, and Jāmadagnī. The chief sanctity attaches to the Gautamī branch on the east.

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¹ *Brahma Purāṇa*, ch. 173. 3-4; *Ep. Ind.*, xii, 216, ‘he reverenced the holy Bhīmeśvara, passing close to whom the Godāvarī, with dancing waves as her eye-brows, sings (his praises) with the seven notes of her (seven) streams’. The reference is to the famous shrine of Bhīmeśvara (Śiva) at Drākshārāma which now stands on a canal fourteen miles away from the river.

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The Kṛishṇā, literally ‘of black hue’, probably derives its name from the black soil, *kṛishṇabhūmi*, *kare-nāḍu*, which it moistens with its water. It takes its rise about forty miles from the Arabian Sea on the eastern brow of the Mahābaleshwar plateau. The source is situated nearly thirty-three miles north-west of Sātāra on a spur of the Sahyādri. Hence it is often referred to in epigraphic records as Sahyajā or Sahyaputrī. The stream pours out of a stone cow’s mouth into a small reservoir inside an ancient shrine of Śiva.

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The Kṛṣṇā is in length less than the Godāvarī, being about 800 miles, as compared with about 900 miles of the Godāvarī. But the area of its catchment basin, including that of its great tributaries the Bhīmā and the Tuṅgabhadrā, is almost as large as that of the more famous stream, being about 95,000 square miles as compared with 112,000 square miles of the Godāvarī.

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The river runs east and south and then curves to the south-east. It receives the Veṇā or Yenna at Māhuli, about three miles to the east of Sātāra. It next flows past Karāḍ, the heretical Karahāṭaka of the Mahābhārata, where it receives the Koinā on its right bank. About three miles south of Sānglī it is joined by the Varṇā (Varṇā). From its confluence with the Veṇā and apparently also with the Varṇā it derives the different forms of its name, Kaṇhabemṇā, Kṛṣṇaveṇṇā, Kṛṣṇabeṇṇā, Kṛṣṇaveṇā, Kṛṣṇaveṇī, Kṛṣṇaverṇā, and Kṛṣṇavarṇā. Sometimes the full appellation is replaced by Veṇā and Veṇī. In the Purāṇas we meet with the forms Veṇikā and Kṛṣṇaveṇikā.

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In the Bījāpur District two streams from the Western Ghāṭs, the Ghāṭ-prabhā and the Malprabhā, famous in history, join the Kṛṣṇā whose water rushes from rock to rock shooting columns of spray high into the air and leaping into wild pools at the feet of gorges. On reaching the state of Hyderabad the river drops from the tableland through which it had forced its way down to the celebrated doābs of Shorāpur and Raichūr. The first of these is formed by its junction with the Bhīmā which rises in the Sahyādri near the temple of Bhīmāśaṅkar in the Poona District, and flows past the holy city of Paṇḍharpur. Among its feeders are the Indrāyani which runs past Dehū, sacred to Tukārām, and Ālandi, home of Jñāneśvara, the Mulā-muthā on which stands Poona, the Nira which laves the spur crowned by Torna in the Bhor State, the Sinā which passes by Ahmadnagar, and the Kāgnā which once flowed past the famous metropolis of Mānyakheṭa. The Raichūr Doāb is formed by the confluence of the Kṛṣṇā with the Tuṅgabhadrā, ‘the Gaṅgā of the South’.¹ The junction takes place not far from Ālampur, possibly identical with Halampura of an early Prakrit inscription found at Gurzāla. The Tuṅgabhadrā is formed by the union of the twin streams, the Tuṅga and the Bhadrā which rise at Gaṅgāmūla in the Varāhaparvata near the frontier of the Kaḍūr District, Mysore. The Tuṅga passes by Śṛingeri (Rishyaśṛiṅga-giri), and after junction with the Bhadrā flows past Harihar, Hampi (which represents the ancient Pampā-kshetra and marks the site of Vijayanagar), Anegundi (Kuñjarakoṇa, the elephant corner of ancient geographers), and Ālampur, and unites with the Kṛṣṇā a little distance from the last-mentioned city. With its water swollen by the Tuṅgabhadrā, the Kṛṣṇā runs past the famous Śrīsailam where it seems to be known as Pātāla-gaṅgā,² and receives on the way the Musī, the river of Hyderabad, and the Muner (Maudgalya) which comes from the Pākhāl Lake. Flowing through the classic land between the cities of Dhānyakaṭaka-Amarāvatī and Vijayavāṭikā (Bezwāḍa) it enters the sea by two principal mouths, forming a wide delta.

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¹ Indian Antiquary, v, 319.

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² Ep. Ind., iv, 319.

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