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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s3.t2: Forests

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s3.t2

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Forests

v1.c6.s3.t2.1

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.

Cites (5)